Gallup by Eliot (4 results)

Softcover. Condition: Very Good. Uncorrected proof. Very good sewn sheets of which the first two are loose, with label pasted in stating price and publishing date.

Limited edition of 150 copies, of which this is no. 105, 8vo., pp.(viii), plain card wrappers with printed jacket; a fine copy. [A reprint of T.S. Eliot's introduction to a 1928 production of 'The Merry Masque of Our Lady in London Town', by Charles A. Claye; unlisted in Gallup's Bibliography].

Paperback. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. None (illustrator). A limited reprinting of T. S. Eliot's preface to Charles Claye's play 'The Merry Masque', a nearly unknown piece of his writing. A limited edition of one hundred and fifty numbered copies, this copy being number 90.In the publisher's original stapled wraps, with an adhered dust wrapper (unpriced).This preface was unknown until Stanley Revell, a book collector, discovered it in a Cornwall bookshop. It was written, however never officially published, to introduce'The Merry Masque of Our Lady in London Town', a play produced by Charles A. Claye in 1928 that performed into the 1950s.The title refers to the lack of this preface's mention in Donald Gallup's bibliography of Eliot.This unique piece of Eliot's writing foreshadows his interest in religious and poetic drama, with his 'Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry' publishing that same year. In the publisher's original stapled wraps, with an adhered dust wrapper (unpriced).Externally, excellent, with minor bumping to the edges of the dust wrapper only. Internally, firmly bound with bright and clean pages. Fine. book.

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. Limited Edition. Wrappers. Edition limited to 150 numbered copies, produced to accompany an exhibition of Stanley Revell's T.S. Eliot collection organized by Robin Waterfield in the University Church, Oxford, May 1988. This four-page preface was unknown until Stanley Revell, an Oxford master butcher and keen book collector, discovered it in a Cornwall bookshop. Although a sister play by the Rev Charles Claye, The Joyous Pageant of the Holy Nativity, was performed annually for over 30 years at the Chelsea Palace Theatre, London, by the players of St Mary's Church, Graham Street (now Graham Terrace; the church now known as St Mary's, Bourne Street), the only other copy to be found of the preface to The Merry Masque (which enjoyed several performances in the same place) is in St Mary's church records. It demonstrates the early interest of T.S. Eliot in religious drama. "You must not expect to find a 'mystery' play," he writes, "you must expect something in a seventeenth century form but with a fourteenth century spirit . . . The Masque which Mr. Claye has written should appeal to everyone according to his knowledge. But it is no more necessary to have an intimate knowledge of the liturgy than to have an intimate knowledge of fifteenth century costume and fifteenth century art." Confirmed in the Church of England in 1927, Eliot didn't write The Rock (for Canterbury Cathedral) until 1934; Murder in the Cathedral followed in 1935.