The Cocktail Party: A Comedy by T S Eliot - 1950

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1950. First edition. Cloth. Very Good Indeed/Good. 8.5" by 5.5". None . T. S. Eliot's comedic play 'The Cocktail Party.' The second state of the first American edition in its dust wrapper. The first American edition, second state of this successful play by noted author T. S. Eliot, one of the ten thousand copies printed with a cancel leaf at page 35-6; Gallup notes about ten copies of the first issue were published without cancel leaf. This was Eliot's most successful play, though perhaps not the most remembered nowadays; first performed in Edinburgh in 1949, it focuses on a troubled married couple who try and sort out their issues thanks to the help of a mysterious stranger. Starting off as a light satire of the tradition British drawing room comedy, it slowly develops into a much darker philosophical treatment of human relationships through one of the author's favoured elements of the absurd. In the unclipped dust wrapper. An excellent copy. In the original publisher's cloth binding. Externally very smart with minor shelf wear only and a slight bumping to the head and tail of the spine and to the extremities. The dust wrapper is sound with some shelf wear and a slight loss to the head of the spine and front wrap; the spine is slightly sunned. Internally, firmly bound. The pages are clean with only a touch of age toning, as usual. Very Good Indeed