GAY, John 1685-1732

The Beggar's Opera With an Introduction by Oswald Doughty, M.A., B.Litt., Lecturer in English, University College, London, twenty-eight plates in collotype and a facsimile title of the first edition. [Libretto]

London: Daniel O'Connor [The Chiswick Press], 1922.

Large octavo. Quarter ivory cloth with title label printed in red and black to spine and upper board; endpapers with reproductions of original cast portraits. 1f. (recto half-title, verso edition statement), 1f. (recto blank, verso portrait of Lavinia Fenton), 1f. (recto title, verso publisher's statement), v (contents), [vii-viii] (list of illustrations), ix-xxviii (editor's introduction), xxix-xxxii (appendix to the introduction), xxxiii-xxxiv (works consulted), vi, 99 pp., 1f. (colophon). On laid paper.

With 28 collotype plates with tissue guards.

Binding somewhat bumped, soiled, browned, and discolored. Minor foxing; slightly browned; previous owner's bookplate laid down verso of flyleaf "Ex libris Dr. P. Girardin."

Limited to 1,000 copies, this copy unnumbered.

The Beggar's Opera, a ballad opera a libretto by John Gay, premiered in London at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 29 January 1728.

"The Beggar’s Opera took London by storm, and it remains one of the most frequently performed operatic works in English. There was no precedent or model for the work. ...The Beggar’s Opera may fairly be called ‘frivolously nihilistic’. Ironically, it is almost always now staged as a period romp, and appears to have been given in an equally superficial way during the 18th century. Other kinds of production are possible, as David Freeman demonstrated in his Opera Factory production of 1982, replete with punk rock additions but giving the text the ugliness and despair that are almost always masked in performance by surface jollity." Robert D. Hume in Grove Music Online.

Item #35829

Price: $25.00  other currencies