Post-Mortem.

by COWARD, Noël.

$1,024 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

London: William Heinemann Ltd,, 1931. First edition, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "For Joe, From Noel, 1931". The play was written at the height of Coward's dramatic power but went unperformed in his lifetime. "By the early thirties, Coward's increasingly mature work and its critical and popular success had established him as probably the most important dramatist of his day... Virginia Woolf, flattered by his attentions, professed to have fallen 'in love' with the playwright and his work, and encouraged him to write more adventurously. The openly gay Semi-Monde (1926) and the anti-war polemic of Post-Mortem (1930), written after his brief appearance in a Singapore production of Journey's End, appeared to be Coward's attempt to write up to these expectations" (Philip Hoare in ODNB). Octavo. Original purple cloth, spine lettered in gilt, publisher's device to rear pastedown. With dust jacket. Spine sunned, edges a little foxed; jacket unclipped, spine toned, edges chipped, a little soiling to panels, previous pencil ownership inscription to front flap: a very good copy in like jacket.

• Year: 1931
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: hardcover

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