Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$70.00 + shipping
Description: Apparent First Edition (NAP). Only First Edition that I could find for sale on the Internet. I've rated the book Very Good Minus. It's nearly 119-years-old. It has a gilt top edge. You can see the covers in the first three photographs. The front and the back have some handling soiling and some fading to brown around the margins. The spine is darkened as well, although the gilt lettering is very bright. There's slight loss at the spine ends affecting the lettering. The book is actually rather well bound. There's a slight give between the front cover and front end paper and there are a handful of instances where the gutter between two opposite pages is visible. However, in each of these instances nothing is loose. The pages are in good condition and are quite clean. I saw only a few edge tears and a tiny loss on the edge of one page. There is the expected age darkening. There is also an inscription on the front free end paper which is dated 1898. But there isn't any other writing, underlining, etc. anywhere in the book. Nor are there any markings or attachments. There is a frontispiece photograph of George Bernard Shaw that is in excellent condition. And that's pretty much it.
Seller: Rareeclectic, pound ridge, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$200.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: 12mo. 235 pp. Very Good, Beige Cloth with sun-fading, some stains, rubbing, & edge wear; wrinkled portion indicating separation of cloth from front board; end papers stained; some shelf wear. Provenance: John Ruyle; previous owner's signature inked inside cover. Photograph of Shaw on frontispiece facing title page. One of 1240 copies. First Edition.
Seller: Wittenborn Art Books, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
Shaw, George Bernard. Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant.. Grant Richards, London, 1898.
Price: US$1200.00 + shipping
Description: First edition of the definitive text of Shawâs volume of âunpleasantâ plays: Widowersâ Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warrenâs Profession Octavo, two volumes, original cloth with gilt titles to the spine, top edge gilt, tissue-guarded frontispiece and 8 pages of publisher's advertisements to Vol. I, 4 pages of publisher's advertisements to Vol. II. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page of Vol. I, "From G.B.S., painter of humanity, to Warne Browne, painter of the next deepest subject - the sea! Cadgwith Sept. 1899." The recipient, Alfred J. Warne Browne, was an English seascape painter based in Cornwall. His work was highly popular in both the United Kingdom and the United States; he exhibited at the Royal Academy, New Watercolour Society, and Walker's Gallery in London between 1884 and 1903. Upon his death in Ruan Minor from a stroke in 1915, he was described in the Helston Advertiser as "a true Bohemian, with a highly developed artistic temperament. Mr. Warne Browne loved the sea, and painted it with a sincerity and fidelity which ought to have secured for him a higher place in the world of art" (Cornwall Artist's Index, 2022). In very good condition. Small bookplates. Housed in a custom half morocco and folding chemise slipcase. With Plays Unpleasant, Shaw issued a radical challenge to his audiencesâ complacency and exposed social evils through his dramatization of the moral conflicts between youthful idealism and economic reality, promiscuity and marriage, and the duties of women to others and to themselves. His first play, Widowersâ Houses, depicts Harry Trenchâs dilemma on learning that the inheritance of his fiancà e comes from her fatherâs income as a slum landlord. In The Philanderer, charismatic Leonard Charteris proposes marriage to Grace, while he is still involved with the beautiful Julia Cravenâ"who is not inclined to give him up so easily. And in Mrs. Warrenâs Profession, Vivie Warren is forced to reconsider her own future when she discovers that her motherâs immoral earnings funded her genteel upbringing.
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.
Shaw, George Bernard. Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant. Grant Richards, London, 1898.
Price: US$1250.00 + shipping
Description: First edition. Photogravure portrait frontispiece. 2 vols. 8vo. Presentation Copy. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED on the half-title: "Inscribed for James Wells / G. Bernard Shaw / London 10th January 1929." JC-NY/BL Original green cloth, t.e.g. Minor soiling, else very good, in a green quarter morocco slipcase with chemise Photogravure portrait frontispiece. 2 vols. 8vo
Seller: James Cummins Bookseller, ABAA, New York, NY, U.S.A.