[Christopher Fry, 1930s pantomime (author's first book?) by the writer of 'The Lady's Not for Burning'.] Printed play text: 'The Sleeping Beauty | A Pantomime | by | Christopher Fry.'

Author: 
Christopher Fry (1907-2005), playwright and poet, noted for his verse dramas, author of 'The Lady's Not for Burning'
Publication details: 
Printers' slug on title-page: 'Courier Co., Ltd., Tun. Wells.' [Tunbridge Wells, 1934.]
£250.00
SKU: 22299

Possibly the author's first book (see below), from the Christopher Fry papers (despite the ownership inscription). 54pp, 12mo. Stapled into green printed wraps (title and words '(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)'). Tiny ownership signature in initials ('R. G.') in top right-hand corner of title-page. No details of publication or date, other than the printers' slug at bottom left of title-page. At the foot of the title-page, where the name of the publisher usually sits, is: '(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED) | Requests for permission to perform this Pantomime should be made to the publishers.' Aged and worn, in like wraps, with lightly-rusted staples. A humorous piece in prose and verse, with humour and colloquial dialogue pointing to Fry's future achievements. Scarce: the only two copies on OCLC WorldCat at Oxford and the British Library, the latter copy being dated to 1934. Consequently one of Fry's earliest published works (it is stated on the title-page that the work has 'publishers', see above), if not his first, appearing around the same time as the 1934 'She Shall Have Music', written with Monte Crick and F. Eyton. According to Fry's entry in the Oxford DNB: 'After a brief spell as an actor in Bath and a schoolteacher in Surrey, in 1934 he became director of a repertory theatre in Tunbridge Wells, where he staged the first English production of G. B. Shaw's Village Wooing.'