£95
INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR, 8vo, pp. 19, [1]. Original paper wrappers, grey paper dustjacket, title label to front wrapper printed in red. A fine copy. Inscribed to inside front wrapper: ‘With Christmas wishes from the Playwright, December 1971’.
A privately-printed short piece of verbatim theatre, dramatising an evening at the New York home of bibliophile Colonel Ralph Heywood Isham, whose fanatical pursuit of the private papers of James Boswell culminated in their sale to Yale University in 1949. Its author was a noted collector herself, assembling a large collection of Samuel Johnson's belongings, as well as an Oscar Wilde collection now in the British Library. It was printed for distribution as a Christmas gift by Hyde and is understandably scarce: Library Hub records two copies, at Manchester and Cambridge.
