A very scarce example of what is widely referred to as Stoppard's 'first play'

Stoppard, Tom ~ Enter a Free Man : Signed By The Author

Faber and Faber, London : 1968

The First UK printing published by Faber and Faber, London in 1968. 8vo., burgundy publisher's cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; together in the unclipped photographic wrapper ('21s net' to the front flap) featuring a photograph by Bryan Heseltine; The BOOK is in excellent condition, with no noticeable defects apart from a hint of toning to the text-block; The WRAPPER is in Very Good++ condition. A little shelf wear and darkening along folds; with some minor rubbing to the edges and a couple of tiny nicks along the spine. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. This copy has been signed (without dedication) by Tom Stoppard to the front free endpaper. This copy previously in the personal collection of literary agent Kenneth Ewing, though with no ownership markings. 'Enter a Free Man' was first performed at the St Martin's Theatre, London (now famously home to Agatha Christie's 'The Mouse Trap'), on the 28th March 1968. The play is essentially a reworking of his first stage play, 'A Walk on Water', which had in turn been greatly inspired by Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman'. In a later interview, Stoppard claimed that "It is basically the play I wrote in 1960...it is still a play about the same people in the same situation. There is some new stuff in it and I have thrown out certain things. There was some imagery which went bad on me as things do, I suppose about a third of it has been written in at various times over the last few years." The plot follows an ultimately unsuccessful inventor, George Riley, his wife Penelope, who yearns for freedom, and his daughter Linda, who provides her father with the pocket money he needs to wile away the hours in his local pub. His groundbreaking creations, such as reusable envelopes and an indoor watering device for flowers ultimately fail, despite his protestations that "This isn't like the others - this is the real thing - you'll see". "If we hadn't already seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern", Richard Brydon wrote in 'The Observer' at the time, "we'd be hailing 'Enter a Free Man' as the liveliest debut for years". Kenneth Ewing was one of London's leading literary agents, and is credited for bringing the works of such authors and playwrights as John Osborne, Iris Murdoch, and indeed Tom Stoppard to public consciousness, as co-founder of the agency 'Peters, Fraser and Dunlop'. A very scarce example of what is widely referred to as Stoppard's 'first play'. "If he was going to be a failure anyway, he was better off failing at something he wanted to succeed at. So he would be an inventor." (Warner A3 a).

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good ++