First Obtainable Printing of "Is She His Wife? or, Something Singular"
Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular. A Comic Burletta in One Act.
Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877.
or, Something Singular. A Comic Burletta in One Act. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877.
First obtainable printing. Sixteenmo. 80pp.
Original brown cloth, decoratively blocked in black and blind, lettered in gilt and black. Off-white endpapers printed in red. A fine, bright copy. Housed in a custom maroon cloth slipcase, black morocco label on spine, gilt-stamped.
Apparently no copy exists of the first (1837) edition of this play, Dickens’ third published play (first performed 6 March 1837); this is the only published work by Dickens to which this situation applies. (The Gimbel collection has playbills for performances on 13 March and 6 April 1837.) Eckel mentions that the only known copy of this edition was at Osgood for their 1877 reprint and was subsequently destroyed in a fire there in 1879. A census in Eckel finds only three extant copies of the 1873 British reprint. Thus, the Osgood reprint of 1877 is the first obtainable printing of this piece.
(The Gimbel collection does have a copy [of the 1873 English], probably the one mentioned by Eckel as lacking the back wrapper; the extensive McQuire collection of American Dickens did not have a copy; Vander Poel had both green and brick cloth variants of the 1877, as did Gimbel.)
Eckel, 159ff. Gimbel B62. Carr, VanderPoel Dickens B530 (1 & 2).
HBS 66292.
$1,250.
Price: $1,250.00
Item #66292