theatre

First edition of a gothic drama recounting the trials of an incarcerated nun — a theme with obvious anticlerical and libertarian potential which attracted several French novelists of the Revolutionary era, including Olympe de Gouges (in Le Couvent ou les voeux forcés) and Chénier (in Fénelon ou les religieuses de Cambrai). Julie was Pougens’ only drama and was evidently given salon performances by the actor François-Joseph Talma, and William Godwin read it in 1801 (Diary, 4 July 1801 http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/diary/). Charles de Pougens (1755–1833) is an interesting figure — the natural son of the Prince de Conti, he was highly educated and began a diplomatic career in Rome 1776, cut short by smallpox which left him blind. He travelled to England and was associated with Cagliostro and the transgender Chevalier D’Eon. Sentenced to death by the French Revolutionary authorities, in 1794, he survived when the execution of Robespierre brought an end to the Reign of Terror. The National Convention awarded him a pension, and in 1795 he opened a business in Paris selling books on commission. He best known for his early speculative lost-race novel Jocko (1824). Gay, II, 749; Cioranescu 51120; Quérard VII, 302. Worldcat: Hagley Library, Harvard, Texas, Toronto and Victoria (BC) in North America.

First edition, deluxe issue, inscribed to ‘To my dear Graham [Robertson] Sep 1908 ET Nelleanora’ on half-title, with a small collection of associated and autograph material. The book was limited to 1000 copies for sale of which the first 250 copies are signed copies this being 122. With the book is an envelope containing a small collection marked ‘Items linked to Ellen Terry’s Story of my Life’, which includes four Terry autograph fragments (two on an envelope, one on a photo postcard with a family group), several photographs (early copies) of Terry, items concerning the G.F. Watts portrait, newspaper cuttings, an autograph letter from Sir John Gielgud, letters from Terry’s daughter Edith Craig (‘Edy’, to whom Terry dedicates the book) and her grandson, Edward Craig.
Ellen Terry was pre-eminent among the figures who defined the artist and illustrator W. Garham Robertson’s early life, dubbed by him ‘Our Lady of the Lyceum’ (Time Was) and his reminiscences of his time with her are among the most satisfying of his memoirs. He drew her several times, and The Story of my Life contains one of his portraits.

Not in King, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003).

Sole edition, this copy signed and inscribed by the artist to Pierre Toreilles. For the Shakespeare 400 year centenary Hugo painted 13 very large panels depicting an imagined journey of Shakespeare from Stratford to Oxford, a path the artist apparently traced on foot. His scenes comprise: Charlecote Park, Fowlers and the Red House of Tysoe, Gentry at Compton Wyngates, Mummers on the Green, Nearing Oxford, Chipping Camden Fair, The Road to Market,The Cotswold Games, Plough and Pasture, Hawking in the Stour Valley and Meon Hill.

‘The French artist Jean Hugo (1894-1984) produced... a set of six canvases he painted for the Shakespeare Festival Exhibition, organised by the ballet critic Richard Buckle in Stratford-upon-Avon. Opened by Prince Phillip on 23 April 1964, the exhibition celebrated the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth and aimed to portray the world of Tudor England as it may have appeared to Shakespeare... Jean Hugo was born in Paris the great-grandson of the poet and novelist Victor Hugo. He was a painter, illustrator, theatre designer and author, whose artistic career spanned the 20th century and whose work brought him into contact with many of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Paul Elouard, Francis Poulenc, Max Jacob, Cecil Beaton and many others.’ (V&A website). Not found in JISC/Libraryhub. Worldcat lists copies at National Gallery of Canada and University of Strasbourg only.

A rare perspective peepshow depicting a boar hunt in a forest, with horses and dogs. Engelbrecht (1684-1756) produced many different designs of these sets in three sizes, of which ours is an example of the smallest (and rarest). They were designed to be viewed when slotted successively into a perspective viewing box but can equally be appreciated when standing in simple slots or stands. One of the parts is marked ‘N. 87’ in the plate. In this example the prints have been mounted in the early nineteenth-century. cf. Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows (2015), pp. 14–15 and David Robinson, ‘Augsburg Peepshows’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 188–191.�

A rare perspective peepshow depicting a stag hunt in a forest, with horses and dogs. Among the hunters is one with a rifle, and two with horns. Engelbrecht (1684-1756) produced many different designs of these sets in three sizes, of which ours is an example of the smallest (and rarest). They were designed to be viewed when slotted successively into a perspective viewing box but can equally be appreciated when standing in simple slots or stands. One of the parts is marked ‘N. 87’ in the plate. In this example the prints have been mounted in the early nineteenth-century. cf, Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows (2015), pp. 14–15 and David Robinson, ‘Augsburg Peepshows’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 188–191.�

A rare large-format toy theatre print with figures for cutting out and mounting from a performance at Astley’s Amphitheatre, which was then managed by Andrew Ducrow, the father of circus equestrianism. The plate is unsigned other than by the publisher William West and is unattributed in the British Museum print catalogue, but it is of high quality. The BM copy was acquired with the nineteenth-century collection of toy theatre prints assembled by Ralph Thomas, who had made a tentative attribution to William Blake in Notes and Queries in 1898 (June 4th, p. 455). The British Museum did not adopt the attribution, though there is certainly something of Blake’s style in the print. William West was the pioneer of the Regency toy theatre print, commissioning work from both Cruickshank brothers, Flaxman, Dighton and Brooke.

In 1827 Harriet Mellon, widow of the banker Thomas Coutts married William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans. The daughter of a family of travelling players, Harriet had become an actress at an early age and was spotted by Coutts while performing in London. As a young woman she was widely celebrated for her beauty, and was painted by George Romney and Sir Thomas Lawrence. She became wealthy (as a senior partner of Coutts bank) and was 23 years older than Beauclerk on their marriage, providing ample scope for unkind commentary and ammunition for the satirists. Nicknamed ‘The Jolly Duchess’ Harriett enjoyed her wealth, was a great collector and generous patron. She wrote to her friend Sir Walter Scott:

‘What a strange eventful life has mine been, from a poor little player child, with just food and clothes to cover me, dependent on a very precarious profession, without talent or a friend in the world – first the wife of the best, the most perfect being that ever breathed …and now the wife of a Duke! You must write my life… my true history written by the author of Waverley’. (Scott’s Journal, 30 June 1827).

After her death, she left an allowance to the Duke but her fortune passed to step-grandaughter Angela Burdett-Coutts, whose philanthropic association with Dickens is well known. BM Satires 15461. 

First edition. ‘... born at Calais, author of lively, licentious novels, widely read about 1800 (the favourite reading of Miss Crawley in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair)... During a riotous, dissipated youth this author returned to Calais on one occasion to find that his disgusted father had published notice of his death’ (Oxford Companion to French Literature).

Monsieur Botte was reprinted several times and seems to have found favour in 1803 adapted for the stage as M. Botte; ou, Le négociant anglais comédie en trois actes et en prose, imitée du roman de Pigault-Lebrun by Servières and Sutton de Clonard. The Critical Review describes an English edition of 1804 published by William Lane (of the Minerva Press), but if it was indeed published by Lane, we can find no trace of it in the usual catalogues.

First edition, a carnival chapbook with burlesque dialogues. The first woodcut, as a frontispiece, depicts a cartful of fools led by a horse and pierrot, the second shows a mountebank poking fun at his audience. The term ‘Poissarde’ (literally, a fishwife) refers, in general, to coarse and vulgar language and is frequently to be found in chapbooks of the period. Gay I, 608. Worldcat: Wisconsin only outside Europe.

First edition of Le Tourneur’s monumental translation, instrumental in securing Shakespeare’s reputation in France. Preceded only by La Place’s pioneering but partial translations (1745-49) and by some individual translations by Voltaire and Ducis, Le Tourneur’s is the first attempt at the complete works. Inspired by the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, Le Tourneur prefaces the collection with a long account of the Stratford celebrations presided over by David Garrick (taken without acknowledgement from Benjamin Victor’s History of the Theatres of London, 1771) and with a biography drawn mainly from Rowe. There is also an important critical essay using materials from Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Johnson and Sewell. The extensive subscribers’ lists (a second lists new subscribers since the start of publication) contains prominent names in both France and England.

The story of Shakespeare’s slow acceptance in France in the face of prevailing classicism, is well known — Le Tourneur’s translations were the first to allow French readers to make their own judgements and they perfectly reflect the transition from classicism to romanticism in French culture. Indeed, the preface is considered to contain the very first printed appearance of the word ‘romantique’ in the French language, with Le Tourneur referring to the suitably romantic prospect of a clouded landscape and then stressing the need for both the word and the concept in French.

The edition provoked the ire of the ageing Voltaire (always ambivalent to Shakespeare) who on receiving the first volume wrote in a letter to friend: ‘I must tell you how upset I am for the honour of the theatre, against a certain Tourneur, who is said to be Secretary of [La Librairie], but who does not seem to me the Secretary of Good taste. Have you read two volumes by this miserable fellow, in which he wants to make us all treat Shakespeare as the only model of true tragedy?... What is frightful is that this monster had a following in France; and the height of calamity and horror is that it was I who was once the first to speak of this Shakespeare, it was I who was the first to show the French some pearls that I discovered in his enormous dung-heap’ (translated by Davidson, Voltaire: a Life, 2010, p. 439).

Kane O’Hara, Irish playwright (1711/12–1782), born at Templehouse in Connaught. ‘O’Hara’s first professional play was Midas, an English Burletta, which had its première production at the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, on 22 January 1762. Midas was a clever, chauvinistic response to the success of a touring Italian troupe, the D'Amici family, which had brought a lively production of an Italian burletta to the Smock Alley Theatre on 19 December 1761. The Italian burletta, a slight comic opera already modish on the continent, captivated Dubliners with its simple domestic plot and brisk galante music’ (Oxford DNB). It transferred to London, became a hit and was performed there over 200 times by 1800. O’Hara was seriously shortsighted (he is seen here in spectacles) and lost his sight in 1778.

The etching by Edmund Dorrell (1778-1857) is comparatively rare, the plate apparently having been destroyed soon after it was first printed. This is a splendid example on a full sheet. O’Donoghue 25-II, 1802.

First edition of the author’s first two plays. De Belloy began his career as an actor with a company of comédiens touring Northern Europe and found favour at the court of the Empress Elizabeth at St Petersburg. It was there in 1757 that he wrote his first play, then entitled Le Triomphe de l’amitié, which was performed in Paris as Titus on his return in 1761. It was not a success, but de Belloy followed it with Zelmire in 1762 to much greater acclaim. The tale of a princess of the Isle of Lesbos, it was drawn from Metastasio (as was Titus) and was later the source of Rossini’s Zelmira (1822). De Belloy’s major success, Le Siège de Calais followed in 1765.

Number 10 of 250 copies. Shakespeare’s metaphysical poem on the theme of idealised and mystical love was first published in the Supplement to Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr (1601). In it, the phoenix and the turtle dove are joined in eternal love and burn themselves alive.

A leading figure in the Nouvelle École de Paris, Léon Gischia continued to produce and exhibit avant-garde work throughout the German occupation, despite repeated denunciation for degeneracy. He also produced designs for the theatre, notably for the production in French of Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at the théâtre du Vieux Colombier in 1945. Bland, History of Book Illustration, 321.

First edition of this play, copy on large and thick paper. Marescalchi was born in Bologna, then in the Papal States, on 26 February 1754, into a noble family, he became a hereditary member of the Senate of that town. He later supported Napoleon in Italy and prospered under his patronage.

First editions. A dramatic adaptation of Fielding’s Tom Jones for the French stage by Choudard-Desforges, with its sequel. The plays were written for performance by the Comédie-Italienne, of which the playwright Desforges had been a member. Cioranescu 23412; 23418.

First edition. Considered to be the best play the author wrote in the traditional medium, a landmark in the history of the Italian theatre. The author was later the first Italian playwright to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.