MAUGHAM, W. Somerset.
The Circle: A Comedy in Three Acts.
London: William Heinemann, 1921.
$475.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152489
+$500
First Edition of W. Somerset Maugham's The Circle; One of Only 500 Copies Issued in Boards
First edition of Maugham’s finest comedy, one of only 500 copies issued in the scarce board binding. Duodecimo, original beige paper boards lettered in black. Of the 2,000 copies of the first edition, only 500 were issued in boards, the remaining 1,500 appearing in the publisher’s usual champagne wrappers. Heinemann was experimenting with this form of casing and abandoned it soon afterwards, and copies in boards are consequently very scarce. In very good condition. From the collection of Craig V. Showalter.
The Circle, first produced at the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1921, is widely regarded as W. Somerset Maugham’s finest comedy and one of the most accomplished English comedies of manners of the twentieth century. It turns on Elizabeth, a young wife contemplating leaving her husband for another man, and on the arrival of her mother-in-law Lady Kitty, who thirty years earlier had eloped in exactly the same way and returns to reveal what such a choice actually costs. Maugham sets the glamour of romantic rebellion against the shabby reality it tends to produce, and the play’s mordant wit and refusal of easy sentiment made it a lasting success on both sides of the Atlantic, where it has been revived continually since its premiere. Maugham (1874-1965) was the most commercially successful writer of his generation, at one point having four plays running simultaneously in the West End, and The Circle remains the most durable of them.
The Circle: A Comedy in Three Acts.
$475.00
In Stock
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