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SHAW, G. Bernard. Man and Superman: Illustrated with Photographs from the Maurice Evans Production. Dodd, Mead, U.S., 1948.

Price: US$30.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: With the text reprinted from the 1935 omnibus edition, "Nine Plays" ("because the type is much larger", and it also explains why the book starts on page 485), this edition is published in conjunction with the Maurice Evans production of the play which ran in New York from October 1947 to June 1948. Evans starred in the play as John Tanner and also produced it and directed it (with George Schaefer). The book is illustrated with eight full page black & white photographs from that production, including a wonderful one of Evans and Shaw sitting and chatting. Inscribed and signed by Maurice Evans on the title page. This copy is very good. There is a bookseller's label to front pastedown, a couple of pages have been dogeared, and the edges are slightly browned, but a sound, sharp-cornered copy with no major flaws. The dust jacket, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess. The rear panel and the spine panel are essentially complete, but the front panel, with its photograph of Maurice Evans in character, is detached, split half way up the flap fold, and has apparently been torn at some point and stuck back together with clear tape - not very well. I suppose that it looks borderline presentable behind the acetate. (By the way, apologies for the acetate glare in the photographs. If I took the acetate off to take the picture the dust jacket would fall apart! And the front board is not bowed as it appears - must be something to do with the angle of the photo.) JS

Seller: The Bark of the Beech Tree, Depoe Bay, OR, U.S.A.

George Bernard Shaw. Selected Plays of Bernard Shaw (Vols 1 & 2) (Actor David Birney's copies). Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1948.

Price: US$44.99 + shipping

Condition: Good

Description: Selected Plays of Bernard Shaw (Vols 1 & 2) Published by Dodd, Mead, & Co.1948 green cloth with black and gilt. FROM THE ESTATE OF ACTOR, DAVID BIRNEY (Signed and dated by him at front). With his notes for the play YOU NEVER CAN TELL which he appeared in on stage in 1973 and also notes for the plays HEARTBREAK HOUSE- THE MAN OF DESTINY vol 1: THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA-PYGMALION-MAJOR BARBARA-HEARTBREAK HOUSE-CAPT.BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION- THE MAN OF DESTINY-ANDROCLES & THE LION vol 2: BACK TO METHUSELAH-SAINT JOAN-JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND--YOU NEVER CAN TELL-IN GOOD KING CHARLES'S GOLDEN DAYS "some cloth wear, fraying, vol 1 a little loose in its binding"

Seller: Sheapast Art and Books, Sherman Oaks, CA, U.S.A.

Shaw, Bernard. Man and Superman; With photographs for Maurice Evans' production. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1948.

Price: US$125.00 + shipping

Condition: Good

Description: DJ is worn, torn, soiled, chipped (especially at bottom of spine and corners) and price-clipped. Some pencil and ink marks and underlining and comments noted. Previous owner's name in ink inside the front cover. Signed by Maurice Evans on the title page. This edition was published in conjunction with the production of the play, being presented to American audiences for the first time in thirty-five years by Maurice Evans, it ran for 295 performances on Broadway. The plates for this illustrated edition have been taken from the author's collection, Nine Plays, which was an omnibus volume. These plates were used instead of the standard edition because the type is much larger, more pleasing and more readable. Since Man and Superman is the sixth play in the omnibus volume, it starts on page 485, which is the reason that the page numbers in this volume are so advanced. The complete text of the play is included, along with the author's preface, the :Don Juan in Hell" scene (omitted in the production), The Revolutionist's Handbook, and eight full-page illustrations from the Maurice Evans production. Man and Superman ends on page 686 and is followed by The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion by John Tanner, M.I.R.C. (Member of the Idle Rich Class), which ends at page 743. Maurice Herbert Evans (3 June 1901 - 12 March 1989) was an English actor, noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. His best-known screen roles are Dr. Zeus in the 1968 film Planet of the Apes, and as Samantha Stephen's' father, Maurice, on Bewitched. When the O.S. entered the Second World War, he enlisted in the United States Army and he later was in charge of an Army Entertainment Section in the Central Pacific and played his famous "W.I. version" of Hamlet that cut the text of the play to make the title character more appealing to the troops, an interpretation so popular that he later took it to Broadway in 1945. Evans rose to the rank of Major by the end of the war. He shifted his attention to the works of Shaw, notably as John Tanner in Man and Superman and as King Mangos in The Apple Cart. In 1952, he starred as the murderous husband in the original stage production of Dial M for Murder. He also successfully produced Broadway productions in which he did not appear, notably The Teahouse of the August Moon. Man and Superman is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at the Royal Court Theater in London on 23 May 1905, but it omitted the third act. A part of the act, Don Juan in Hell (Act 3, Scene 2), was performed when the drama was staged on 4 June 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not performed in its entirety until 1915, when the Traveling Repertory Company played it at the Lyceum Theater, Edinburgh. Mr. Whitefield has recently died, and his will indicates that his daughter Ann should be left in the care of two men, Roebuck Ramsden and John Tanner. Ramsden, a venerable old man, distrusts John Tanner, an eloquent youth with revolutionary ideas, whom Shaw's stage directions describe as "prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad". In spite of what Ramsden says, Ann accepts Tanner as her guardian, though Tanner doesn't want the position at all. She also challenges Tanner's revolutionary beliefs with her own ideas. Despite Tanner's professed dedication to anarchy, he is unable to disarm Ann's charm, and she ultimately persuades him to marry her, choosing him over her more persistent suitor, a young man, Tanner's friend, named Octavius Robinson.

Seller: Ground Zero Books, Ltd., Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.