Bethlehem.

£50 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Signed by Housman on the recto of front free endpaper. Newly-prosperous after the success of An Englishwoman’s Love-letters Housman then blew the lot on this, his first play. First it was in trouble with the censor, who didn’t permit representations of the Holy Family on stage, and then he fell out with Gordon Craig, with whom he seems to have ended up very much out of sympathy: Engen quotes him as having said to Robert Ross that Gordon Craig’s “beautiful stage-work lent itself to caricature, over which I wickedly engaged myself”. Spine slightly dried out, and some wear to the boards, but a very good copy.

• Year: 1902

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