PINTER, Harold.

The Collection and The Lover.

London: Methuen , 1963.

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Out of Stock Item Number: RRB-152182

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First Edition of Harold Pinter’s The Collection and The Lover; From the Library of Alan Schneider, Director of Both American Premieres

First edition of Pinter’s paired plays. Octavo, original cloth. From the library of the director Alan Schneider, with his ownership name to the front free endpaper date June 1963. The association could hardly be closer: Schneider himself introduced The Collection to American audiences, directing its United States premiere on a double bill with The Dumb Waiter in 1962, and directed the American premiere of The Lover at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1964. Schneider was among the foremost American directors of his generation and the great champion of the postwar stage in the United States: he directed the American premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1956 and remained Beckett’s preferred American director, staged the United States premieres of Pinter’s plays from the 1962 off-Broadway double bill of The Dumb Waiter and The Collection through the Broadway premiere of The Birthday Party in 1967, and won the 1963 Tony Award for Best Direction for the original production of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Near fine in a very good dust jacket with some wear. A desirable copy from the library of the man who brought both plays to the American stage.

The Collection and The Lover, two of Harold Pinter’s celebrated early plays, were each written for television before conquering the stage: The Collection was broadcast by Associated Rediffusion in 1961 and staged by Peter Hall and Pinter himself at the Aldwych in 1962, while The Lover won the Prix Italia after its 1963 television premiere and transferred to the Arts Theatre the same year. Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, the Swedish Academy observing that he “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.”