Doctors Dilemma: Signed (3 results)

Hardcover. First Edition. Green cloth. SIGNED and INSCRIBED by the author to Sir Almroth Wright on the half-title page: "to Sir Almroth Wright/in whose laboratory the Doctor's Dilemma was/incubated, and in whose brain it was made possible,/from G. Bernard Shaw./23rd February 1911." The immunologist Almroth Wright (18611947) was the basis for Sir Colenso Ridgeon in THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA. A fine ASSOCIATION COPY. Laurence A108a. Sold at Sothebys, 21 July 1988, lot 224. Mild soiling to cloth, rubbed, short split at bottom of front joint. Very Good, lacking the dustwrapper.…

Hardcover. First Edition. First Edition. Hardcover. Signed by Shaw. Shaw, George Bernard. THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA. Getting Married, & The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet. Inscribed. London: Constable & Co., 1911. Sm. 8vo., 407pp., pale green cloth, gilt, t.e.g. A very good or better example of the first edition, first printing. Three plays in one volume, including a list of other works by Shaw at the end of the book. This copy inscribed on the half-title in black fountain pen: "To Robert Loraine / from Bernard Shaw. / 23rd Feb. 1911". Laurence Loraine [1876-1935] was a man of action: actor-manager, soldier, aviator, Fabian and of course, a close friend to Shaw - perhaps best known as an actor he's seen most commonly on holiday with the Shaws and Harley Granville-Barker or at Fabian events. Loraine and Shaw shared political affiliations and a passion for theatre: it was Loraine who premiered as the lead in Man and Superman on Broadway, the production was massively successful and launched Shaw as a force to be reckoned with in the United States. A significant association copy. Signed by Shaw.…

First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by Shaw to his Italian agent and translator Antonio Agresti on the half-title: "To Antonio Agresti from G. Bernard Shaw 23rd. Feb. 1911". The titular work was one of many plays of Shaw's that Agresti translated before his death, helping Shaw to reach an Italian audience. Agresti had been partly chosen by Shaw as his translator for his anarchist beliefs, and he was a member of anarchist circles in both London and in Italy. Shaw stated that he wrote The Doctor's Dilemma to meet a challenge from his friend William Archer, a theatre critic, who claimed that Shaw could only be regarded as a supreme dramatist when he had written a play about death. The resultant work, a satire on the British medical profession in the early 20th century, remains widely regarded as a key work in Shaw's canon and in the fictional literature on medical ethics. The other two plays in the collection were first performed in 1908 and 1909 respectively and are here also published for the first time. Laurence A108. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Light wear to extremities, spine sunned, a few marks to cloth and endpapers, blue crayon to rear pastedown. A good copy.…