Description
The first edition, first printing of Lucrece by Thornton Wilder, from the library of Wilder’s friend, the novelist Glenway Wescott.
Octavo, [6], 89pp, [1]. Orange cloth, title in gilt on the spine and front cover. The first printing, with no additional printings noted on the copyright page. Light dust remnant along top of text block, offsetting to endpapers. Internally clean, a near fine example. Bookplate of Glenway Wescott on the front free endpaper. In the publisher’s near fine dust jacket, $2.00 retail price on the front flap, light sunning to the spine, small chip at the head of the spine.
(Edelstein D1.)
Wilder translated and adapted the play from André Obey’s Le Viol de Lucrèce. The Broadway production opened at the Belasco Theatre on December 20, 1932, starring Katharine Cornell.
Glenway Wescott (1901-1987) was an American novelist and essayist, best known for The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk. He and Thornton Wilder were friends and literary contemporaries. In 1927, Wilder grouped himself with Wescott and Ernest Hemingway as the “three musketeers aged 30,” reflecting his admiration for Wescott’s early work. Wescott later wrote an affectionate essay on Wilder and The Ides of March, collected in Images of Truth in 1962.
