Babes in Toyland (First Edition)

New York: Duffield & Co., 1904. FIRST EDITION, first printing. Quarto pictorial light tan cloth stamped in black and red, lettered in black, pictorial endpapers. Cloth is soiled and rubbed along edge. Lovely decorative endpages The picture between pages 90 and 91 is loose. The spine is slightly cocked there is some slight rubbing to all edges. Illustrated in color by Ethel Franklin Betts. Babes in Toyland is a 1903 operetta by Victor Herbert, which wove together various characters from Mother Goose nursery rhymes into a musical — mainly because librettist Glen MacDonough wanted to cash in on the Wizard of Oz phenomena sweeping Broadway that year. It features some of Herbert's most famous songs - among them "Toyland", "March of the Toys", "Go To Sleep, Slumber Deep", and "I Can't Do The Sum". The title song "Toyland" and "March of the Toys" occasionally show up on Christmas compilations. A new book and lyrics for the show were written for the Light Opera of Manhattan (LOOM) in the 1970s by Alice Hammerstein-Matthias (the daughter of Oscar Hammerstein II) and director-producer William Mount-Burke. LOOM played this operetta as a Christmas show for several weeks each year thereafter for about a decade with considerable success, and the rewritten book and lyrics has since been used by other companies. The ensemble becomes a mechanical militia of toys for the "March of the Toys," and children from the audience are brought up to help "wind-up" the toy dancers. . First Edition. Full Cloth. Very Good/No Jacket. Illus. by Ethel Franklin Betts. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Hardcover.