COWARD, Noel - BEERBOHM, Max.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Heroes and Heroines of Bitter Sweet. Limited edition, number 41 of 100 copies. Each plate, a caricature of the stars of Noël Coward's operetta Bitter Sweet, is signed by the artist and subject. There were 900 further copies issued without autographs. The show was Coward's most successful musical play, running in the West End from 1929 to 1931 and on Broadway from 1929 to 1930. This volume is accompanied by the publisher's prospectus."It was difficult to ignore the production, appearing as it did in every medium. Cochran [the producer] commissioned Max Beerbohm to do a series of Bitter Sweet caricatures. 'Max took a great liking to Noël Coward himself and was enchanted with the play', wrote David Cecil. 'Its nostalgic evocation of Victorian and Edwardian epochs chimed deliciously with the wit of [the song] 'Green carnation', which poked fun at the very group of 'greenery-yallery' aesthetes the venerable dandy personified" (Hoare).Provenance: the New York collector Herbert Schimmel (1909-2003), with his bookplate on the inside cover. A collector of art nouveau, Schimmel also amassed a large library of Coward's works, as well as of his contemporary Ivor Novello.

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