ELIOT, T. S.:

THE ELDER STATESMAN A PLAY BY [...].

New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, [1959]. First edition. Black cloth, gilt stamped spine. A near fine copy in a very good, only minimally rubbed, price-clipped typographic dust jacket.  

First U.S. edition, first printing. Eliot's last play, drafted originally in 1955 but not completed until three years later, and first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1958. The cast of the original production is included at the conclusion of the play. Lord Claverton, an eminent former cabinet minister and banker, is helped to confront his past by the love of his daughter, Antigone. Critics wrote, at the time of its first performances, that the dialogue, the love scenes in particular, contain some of Eliot's most tender and expressive writing for the theatre. The play is dedicated to his second wife, Esmé Valerie Fletcher, 38 years his junior and his former secretary at Faber & Faber, whom he married in 1959. Near fine. / Very good. Item #293

Price: $50.00