Carving a Statue.: A Play.

London: The Bodley Head,, 1964. Presentation copy to a scholar of Greene's writing First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title "For Philip Stafford [sic] with all good wishes for 1965 from Graham Greene". An excellent association: the recipient, Philip Stratford, was an academic at the University of Montreal, who wrote a number of books on Greene, and later befriended him. Stratford first met Greene by chance in Paris in the early 1950s, where he was staying while writing a PhD thesis on Greene and François Mauriac, later published as Faith and Fiction: Creative Process in Greene and Mauriac (1964), which led to renewed academic interest in Greene's writing in North America. They met again in 1970, when Greene asked Stratford to select a number of extracts from his prose for The Portable Graham Greene (1972). While Stratford was editing the volume, he moved to Antibes, on the French Riviera, where Greene had relocated in 1966. There, they drank martinis together at Restaurant Felix, and Stratford and his wife often hosted Greene for dinner. After the Stratfords moved back to Montreal, they were regular visitors to Greene at Antibes, and remained friends with the author until his death in 1991. Carving a Statue was first produced by Peter Wood in September 1965. Greene later wrote of the play that "Never before have I known a play like this one so tormenting to write or so fatiguing in production... At the age of sixty there is no reason to work, except to earn a living or to have 'fun'. This play was never fun and I earn my living in another field" (Greene, Collected Plays, p. 211). The three-act play received less than glowing reviews, prompting the author to include a two-page "epitaph" in the front of the book, which was published subsequent to the production. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge red, red endpapers. With dust jacket. Spine of jacket very slightly faded, a few marks to rear panel: a fine copy in near-fine dust jacket. Miller 46.