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Printer's corrected proofs: 19 leaves, loose (in hand-lettered folder), printed rectos only, lacking only pp. [1]-[2] (title-page and copyright page); Alan Anderson's manuscript corrections on seven pages. The Tragara Press's published edition was limited to 145 numbered copies (30 on Barcham Green "Tovil" paper, the remainder on W.S. Vellum). John Gray's version of Théodore de Banville's Le Baiser (1887) was presented by J.T. Grein's Independent Theatre at the Royalty Theatre, London, in 1892. The text was thought lost until 1976, when it was discovered in the Lord Chamberlain's papers. "It was Grein's custom to submit plays to the Lord Chamberlain when there was little to fear from censorship. More advanced plays were privately produced" (Ian Fletcher). In the same year as the play was performed Gray had a breakdown, apparently caused by his friendship with Oscar Wilde. It was André Raffalovich who picked up the pieces and who largely funded the building of St Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Falcon Avenue, Edinburgh, which opened in 1907 with Gray as its first parish priest. "The SCENE is laid in the Forest of Viroflay. In our own time. The stage shews a corner of a mysterious and romantic forest, abounding with monstrous foliage. There are enormous trees here and there, and one or two bowers. To the left of the spectator, a prostrate tree-trunk covered with moss, looks not unlike a couch. The sky is aflame with dawn; the sun rises slowly. ENTER URGELE, a twisted, decrepit person, clothed in a horrible old brown cloak, thread-bare and patched . . . She is a hundred years old, unlike most people." The first publication of Alan Anderson's Tragara Press was Gray's poem A Phial (1954). Seller Inventory # E100056
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