£200
FIRST EDINBURGH EDITION, 8vo, pp. [ii], 74, [2]. Near contemporary red and gold floral patterned wrappers, with later brown cloth clamshell case, lettered in gilt. A touch of spotting. Wrappers a little creased and faded. A 1935 newspaper clipping reviewing a revival of Douglas loosely inserted, smaller clipping about actress Mrs Siddons pasted inside box, ‘[John Home]’ pencilled to title-page.
The first Edinburgh printing of the famous play by Scottish minister and writer John Home (1722-1808), which debuted in Edinburgh on December 14th, 1756, and its immense success brought on a production at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden from March 14th, 1757. The text saw print in London a few days before this edition, though without the additional nationalistic prologue 'Spoken at Edinburgh' present here. (ESTC records another 1757 Edinburgh printing but its shorter page count matches those of later reprints.)
In the weeks following the play's debut, the Edinburgh Presbytery sent 'a letter of admonition' to members of the church who had been in attendance due to the play's '"pernicious" and "criminal" nature' (Shiffler, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 26-38). The outrage from the presbytery led Home to resign and pursue a career in writing, and it inspired Home's friend and fellow clergyman Alexander Carlyle to pen a satirical pamphlet titled 'An argument to prove that the tragedy of Douglas [by J. Home] ought to be publickly burned by the hands of the hangman'.
Many copies of the play survived in compiled volumes of drama and are now seen disbound or in modern bindings; examples in attractive early wrappers like these are rare.
