Theatre: Plays
James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles-lettres. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular.
His 1921 play, The Jewel Merchants is set in early sixteenth-century Tuscany and explores the moral lassitude and selective ethics of a coterie of businessmen. It's a thoroughly entertaining look at a past culture that is sure to tickle readers' funny bones.
New York; Robert M. McBride & Company, 1921. Limited edition, no. 589 of 1,040. Brown cloth with gilt decoration on cover; spine lettering faded; endpapers tanned; deckled edges; binding tight; text clean. G+
Published by Contemporary Play Publications; Volume II, no. 4, October 1938. Contents: Plays: "The Jar," Luigi Pirandello; "Don't You Want To Be Free," Langston Hughes; Television Script: "It's Really Quite Simple," Harold L. Anderson; Film Sequence: "Blockade," John Howard Lawson; Departments: Music in the Theatre - One Act Opera, Paul Rosenfield; The Theatre, John W. Gassner. Wraps, stapled; covers have water stains, remnants of tape; corners creased; spine missing 1" from bottom; tear at top of spine/front cover; pages slightly tanned. G-
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1901. 1st edition; no dust jacket; ornately decorated gray-blue cloth with gilt lettering; illustrated end papers; 22 tipped-in color plates with tissue guards; half-title lightly foxed; first signature loose with some creasing to the pages; text clean. G
Generally agreed to be one of the most significant forces in the history of the American theater, O'Neill is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in literature for 1936. He won one of his Pulitzer prizes for Strange Interlude. The play exemplifies O'Neill's ability to explore the limits of the human predicament, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences' hearts and it was probably the furor of discussion aroused by the novelty both of theme and treatment in Strange Interlude that made O'Neill's name known wherever the English-speaking stage is discussed.
Boni & Liveright, 1928. Dust jacket in protective cover; attractive but tattered dj with repaired tear and missing chunk at top of spine; dark green cloth with lettering in gilt and decoration in light blue; decorated endpapers; binding good; text clean. G+/G-
Paul Claudel (1868-1955) was the author of numerous plays and several volumes of poetry.
Yale University Press, 1919. 1st edition. Translated from the French by John Strong Newberry. No dust jacket; dark gray cloth over gray boards; title and author on paper label on spine; front cover has one stained area; endpapers foxed; binding tight; some pages uncut; deckled edges; text clean. G
The Press of the Western Reserve University, 1951. Book and lyrics by Lynn Riggs; music by nathan Kroll; cover design by Gina Knee. Illustrated covers; edges and spine toned; binding good; text clean. G
Lynn Riggs was commissioned to write the music play by WRU on the occasion of the 150th year of its founding; play memorializes the early development and the pioneer spirit of that section of the Ohio Country from which the University derives its name. First presented June 11, 1951 at Cain Park Theatre, Cleveland Hts.
We Bombed in New Haven is a 1967 play by Joseph Heller. An anti-war comedy, it is thematically linked in part to Heller's famous novel Catch-22.
1st printing; dust jacket in protective cover; maroon cloth with silver and pink lettering; top edge red; very light foxing on fore-edge; binding tight; text clean. G+/VG
