A History of the Pulitzer Prize Plays
TOOHEY, John L. [Alan Schneider].
A History of the Pulitzer Prize Plays
First Edition of A History of the Pulitzer Prize Plays; Inscribed by John L. Toohey to Director Alan Schneider
New York: The Citadel Press, 1967.
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Item Number: 152219
First edition of this richly illustrated history of the plays awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Quarto, original publisher’s blue cloth, illustrated with over 300 black-and-white photographs. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Alan – We always have openings and this one is no exception. The very best, love and wishes from your gov. J.” The recipient, Alan 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 Samuel 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 good dust jacket with chipping, edgewear, rubbing, and creasing to the extremities. Jacket design by A. Christopher Simon.
A History of the Pulitzer Prize Plays (1967) by John L. Toohey is the most comprehensive single-volume historical and critical survey of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama from its inaugural award in the season of 1917 to 1918 through the mid-1960s, providing in 344 pages a systematic account of each prize-winning play alongside its theatrical and cultural context. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama, established under the terms of Joseph Pulitzer's 1904 bequest to Columbia University and administered by the university's Advisory Board, has since its inception recognized the most distinguished American play produced in each theatrical season, generating across its history a roster of winners encompassing Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee alongside numerous now-forgotten productions whose reception Toohey chronicles with the informed perspective of a scholar steeped in the history of the American theater. The volume's critical apparatus situates each prize-winning play within the broader dramatic trends and theatrical conditions of its season, providing both a reference guide and a narrative history of American drama as refracted through the most prestigious prize the theater world offers, and it has since been acknowledged as a standard reference in the literature of American theatrical history.
