Samuel. Rockaby and other Short Pieces.

by BECKETT

£550 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Inscribed by Beckett’s ‘Favourite Actress, Almost at Times His Muse’ BECKETT, Samuel. Rockaby and other Short Pieces. New York: Grove Press . 1981. 8vo. Original pale blue cloth, spine lettered in silver, in the dust-jacket designed by Janet Odgis, priced $12.50 to upper edge of front flap; pp. 80; spine somewhat sunned, slight pushing and fading to spine tips, jacket lettering a little faded, small loss of laminate ( c . 15 × 15 mm) to upper edge of rear cover, light creasing to head of spine; a near-fine copy in like jacket; signature of Billie Whitelaw to front free endpaper, dated 16 February 1984; with a dated Rockaby faceted paperweight, engraved with the text ‘Rockaby 1984’, made by the renowned Belgian crystal manufacturer Val St. Lambert ( see below ). First US edition, first printing, of the first appearances in print of Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu , the first in book form of A Piece of Monologue , and first US appearance of the prose All Strange Away , signed and dated by Billie Whitelaw, who gave the first performances of Rockaby , Beckett’s ‘favourite actress, almost at times his muse’ (Ackerley and Gontarski). Rockaby was written for a conference at the Center for Theater Research, Buffalo, where it was directed by Alan Schneider with Whitelaw as the Woman and the Voice (respectively ‘W’ and ‘V’ in the text) first performed on 8 April 1981; the London première – reprising Buffalo – followed at the Cottesloe Theatre in December 1982. The role had originally been i

• Binding: Hardcover

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