MR. NIGHTINGALE'S DIARY: A FARCE IN ONE ACT

123 x 85 mm. (4 3/4 x 3 1/4"). 96 pp., [2] leaves (ads). Appealing forest green morocco, covers with French fillet borders, raised bands, spines gilt in delicately tooled compartments with scrolling centerpiece within a lozenge of small tools, volute cornerpieces, gilt titling, turn-ins densely gilt with floral rolls and plain and decorative rules, purple endpapers, all edges gilt, original (extremely well-preserved) gilt cloth wrappers bound in at rear. Eckel, pp. 164-65; Podeschi B-215. A very fine and very pretty copy with only quite trivial imperfections. This is a very attractively bound copy of the first trade, first American, and first obtainable edition of a play on which Dickens collaborated as editor (and in which he appeared as a player during performance). "Mr. Nightingale's Diary" was written for performance by the Company of Strolling Players, an acting troupe organized by Dickens to support the Guild of Literature and Art, which provided financial aid and housing to struggling writers and artists. Dickens had initially intended to write the farce independently, but due to time constraints, passed the project over to his friend and the editor of "Punch" magazine, Mark Lemon. However, Dickens revised the play during the production process so thoroughly that he is considered a full co-writer; Eckel says that it "was as much Dickens' as it was Lemon's." The play was performed at Devonshire House in May of 1851, with a cast including Dickens and Lemon as well as sensation novelist Wilkie Collins. The first edition of this work was privately printed for Dickens, but that printing is quite rare: Eckel writes that he was able to trace only three copies. The present Boston reprint was made from an original pamphlet said to have been lost in the same 1879 fire as the last original copy of "Is She His Wife," another Dickens play. Our copy is a particularly fine one; the unsigned but handsomely decorated binding is very probably by the Riviere bindery, since it exactly matches a copy of "Is She His Wife" currently in our inventory in a signed Riviere binding.…