Drama from Sumner & Stillman

1903. By Hermann Sudermann. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903. Original dark grey-green paper-covered boards decorated in gilt. First (and only) Edition in English, first (American) issue but with title page dated 1903 rather than 1902. Wharton agreed to translate this play only reluctantly, perhaps drawn by a topic she would later express in her own novels: the… Read more about this item

1877. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877. Original terra-cotta cloth decorated in black. First "Collectible" Edition of this play first performed in 1851. We say first "collectible" because there are only four known copies of the original 1851 pamphlet; supposedly a fifth, from which Osgood printed this edition, was destroyed in the Boston fire of 1879. This… Read more about this item

1894. Shannon, Charles. London: John Lane at the Sign of the Bodley Head, 1894. 16 pp ads dated March 1894. Original violet cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition of Wilde's satirical play about upper-class social scandal, which consisted of 500 copies (so stated -- half as many copies as the following year's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST). Wilde… Read more about this item

1934. London: Macmillan and Co., 1934. Original bright blue-green cloth, with dust jacket. First Edition, which consisted of 3000 copies -- dedicated to Lady Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, who had died in 1932. This volume consists of four plays that had appeared onstage at the Abbey Theatre -- "The Words upon the Window-pane," "Fighting the Waves,"… Read more about this item

1890. [Together, five volumes.] London: Edward Bumpus, 1890 [last one: George Bell & Sons / J. & E. Bumpus, n.d.(1894)]. Original buff-grey wrappers printed in black. These are Nos. ii through vi of the eight "Plays by Robert Bridges," initiated by Edward Bumpus. There were three other plays: NERO [Part I] -- not numbered, and in a different-style… Read more about this item

1955. (New York:) A New Directions Book, (1955). Original light brown cloth lettered in black, with dust jacket. First Edition, first issue, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a dying southern patriarch, Big Daddy Pollitt, and the greed of his would-be heirs -- spiced up by the presence of Maggie the Cat. In March 1955 the play, directed… Read more about this item

1915. [Chicago:] The Chicago Little Theatre, 1915. Original pictorial wrappers. First Edition of Rupert Brooke's only play, considered (by Keynes among others) to have consisted of only 200 copies. Before the war young Brooke wrote this play, never expecting it to be performed (a stranger gets lost in rural Lithuania and stops for the night at a hut… Read more about this item

1895. A Melodramatic Farce in Three Acts. In: [two issues of] The Chap-Book Semi-Monthly. Chicago: Stone and Kimball, June 1 & June 15, 1895. Original cream wrappers printed in red and black.. First Trade Appearance (? -- a London appearance came out the same month). The play "Robert Macaire" had been performed in England since 1835, and before… Read more about this item

1923. Edited with a Preface by Michael Sadleir. London: Constable & Company, 1923. Original blind-stamped deep red cloth with gilt-decorated spine. First Edition, which consisted of only 500 copies. This is one of only two plays that Trollope ever wrote, as "the genre was uncomfortable to him." He wrote it early in his career, in 1850, at about… Read more about this item

1878. A Comic Opera. In Two Acts. The Music by John Hullah. London: Richard Bentley, 1836 [but ca. 1878]. Original printed self-wrappers. This is the ca. 1878 facsimile reprint of the 1836 first edition of Dickens's first play to be published -- which by 1878 was already a rare item. It is identifiable by the "A Facsimile Reprint"… Read more about this item

1906. [inscribed by Housman] Or Love in a Dutch Garden. London: A. H. Bullen, 1906. 1 page undated ads. Original mauve cloth. First Edition of this play, largely for mummers. It was issued both in cloth and, less seldom seen, in purple wrappers. According to the last page of text, the play was first performed on 23 December… Read more about this item

1921. A Metabiological Pentateuch. London: Constable and Company, 1921. Original olive green cloth, with dust jacket. First English Edition of one of Shaw's best-known plays, beginning in the Garden of Eden and culminating in A.D. 31,920 ("as far as thought can reach"). Brentano's edition in New York was issued about three weeks earlier. This is a fine copy… Read more about this item

1877. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877. Original terra-cotta cloth decorated in black. First "Collectible" Edition of this play first performed in 1851. We say first "collectible" because there are only four known copies of the original 1851 pamphlet; supposedly a fifth, from which Osgood printed this edition, was destroyed in the Boston fire of 1879. This… Read more about this item

1901. Newly Revised with several prefaces and an essay on prizefighting. Also The Admirable Bashville. Or, Constancy Unrewarded. Being the novel of Cashel Byron's Profession done into a stage play in three acts and in blank verse. Chicago: Herbert S. Stone and Company, 1901. Original mottled brown cloth with pugilist in white. First Authorized American Edition of Shaw's… Read more about this item

1868. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868. Original terra-cotta cloth decorated in gilt. First American Edition (published on the same day as the London edition and the Leipzig edition) of these two plays in verse form -- "John Endicott" sited in 1665 Boston and "Giles Corey" in 1692 Salem. This copy is in terra-cotta cloth (one of three colors… Read more about this item