[Rarebooks] fa: Dodsley's SELECT COLLECTION OF OLD PLAYS 1825 - Ex-Libris CECIL B. DeMILLE

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, October 11. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/o52x67t

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

A Select Collection of Old Plays… A New Edition: with Additional Notes and Corrections, by the late Isaac Reed Gilchrist, and the Editor. London: Septimus Prowett, 1825. First edition thus. Eleven (of twelve) volumes, 8vo (22 cm), in full burgundy morocco, all page edges gilt.

Cecil B. DeMille's copy, with his library bookplate on the front paste-down of each volume. Lacking vol. VIII. Rubbing to the edges and joints, some bumping/wear to the corners, a few spines with scuffs and wear to the crowns; some volumes with cracking to the front inner hinges but all the boards are secure; one vol. with a bump and chipping to the  fore-edges of 15 leaves; a very few scattered light spots to the leaves, otherwise the contents are very clean and sound, firmly bound.

First assembled by Robert Dodsley in 1744 and enlarged and revised several times in subsequent years, this famous Collection of Old Plays is particularly significant for preserving lesser-known works of the stage, including many plays that were all but forgotten at the time, and remain so. Not only such minor landmarks as Gammer Gurton's Needle and the still performed A Mad World, My Masters, but also obscurer curiosities such as: The Four P's; The Adventure of Five Hours; Chichevache and Bycorne; Grim, the Collier of Croydon; The City Night Cap; The Honest Whore, Part I and II; and many others. An intriguing association: one doesn't immediately associate C. B. DeMille, director and producer of Hollywood epics, with the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, but he certainly loved putting on a show, and perhaps he was contemplating a film version of The Roaring Girl (1611) with Hedy Lamarr in the title role…