WALCOTT, Derek - HILL, Errol (ed.).

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Caribbean Plays. First edition thus, first impression, inscribed by the publishers on the front free endpaper to Alan Ross, "With the compliments of the University College of the West Indies Department of Extra-Mural Studies, Trinidad & Tobago. 26/1/60". Ross (1922-2001) was a poet, cricket correspondent and editor of London Magazine for four decades. He discovered many new talents during his editorship, and introduced Derek Walcott to Tom Maschler, the editorial director at Jonathan Cape. This led to the first publication of Walcott's work outside the Caribbean. Ross's role as cricket correspondent for the Observer took him to the Caribbean, and resulted in his 1960 work, Through the Caribbean: The MCC Tour of the West Indies. Despite its name, the book was in part a travel and historical work.This anthology of five plays was the first of its kind to be published in the British Caribbean, and includes works by Derek Walcott, Cicely Waite-Smith, Errol Hill, Roderick Walcott, and Douglas Archibald. While each play was published separately by the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, this is the first time the works appeared together, with their appearance timed to coincide with the first West Indies Festival of Arts. This festival, according to the foreword, enabled "us, for the first time in our history, to see presented in one place the songs and dances, the plays, painting and sculpture which are our common heritage".

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