Pastor Hall and Blind Man's Bluff

Pastor Hall written by Ernst Toller and translated from the German by Stephen Spender & Hugh Hunt; Blind Man's Bluff co-written by Ernst Toller and Denis Johnston

Published by Random House, New York, 1939

About this Item

Stated 'First printing', First edition. You can see the blue covers in the photos. They are in very nice condition, exceptionally clean. The yellow lettering on the spine is still nicely bright. There is a little bit of crinkling at the bottom edge of the spine. The cover edges are in excellent shape, so are the corners. The page edges are very clean. The middle and bottom ones are deckled or rough-cut-cut. They did a very good job. The book is solidly bound from cover to cover. The covers are nicely, solidly bound as well. The interior of the book is in excellent condition. The pages are exceptionally clean. There is a mild semi-crease off the top corners of a number pages, not at all conspicuous. There are no placeholder creases. There are no markings. And no attachments of any kind. There is small signed name of a previous owner off the top edge of the first blank front end paper. There is no other writing to be found anywhere in the book. You can see the dust jacket in the first few photos. There is a fairly small loss off the top edge of the spine, a tiny one off the bottom edge of the spine. There is some darkening and toning at the margins of the rear cover. The flaps are very clean and in very good condition. All four corners do have tucking-in clips, but the price, off the top edge of the front flap, is unaffected. I have always had the jacket in a fitted protective cover. Toller's friend Thomas Mann is quoted on the front flap: 'Pastor Hall is a powerful drama, convincing and moving. I hope the play will be seen in all free countries.' There's a quote also from the Irish Times: 'Blind Man's Bluff is a masterly dramatic study.' 'Ernst Toller was a dramatist, poet, and political activist, who was a prominent exponent of Marxism and pacifism in Germany in the 1920s. His expressionist plays embodied his spirit of social protest. Toller studied at Grenoble University in France but went back to Germany in 1914 to join the army. He was invalided after thirteen months at the front during World War I. Toller launched a peace movement in Heidelberg. To avoid arrest he fled to Munich, where he helped lead a strike of munition workers and was finally arrested. In 1919 Toller, an Independent Socialist, was elected President of the Central Committee of the revolutionary Bavarian Soviet Republic. After its suppression he was sentenced to imprisonment for five years. A scheme to get him shot in the prison yard was frustrated by a kindly old guard, who routed him away from the gunmen. In confinement Toller wrote Masse-Mensch and Man and the Masses. The latter play brought him widespread fame. Books of lyrics added to his reputation. In 1933, immediately before the accession of Hitler, he emigrated to the United States. Also in that year he brought out his vivid autobiography, Eine Jugend in Deutschland (I Was a German). Suffering from depression, separated from his wife and struggling with financial woes (he had given all his money to Spanish Civil War refugees), Toller committed suicide on 22 May 1939, hanging himself in his room at the Mayflower Hotel after laying out on his hotel desk photos of Spanish children who had been killed by fascist bombs. W. H. Auden's poem 'In Memory of Ernst Toller' was published in Another Time in 1940.'.

Seller Inventory # 005073

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Pastor Hall and Blind Man's Bluff
• Publisher: Random House, New York
• Publication Date: 1939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Jewish, Judaism, Judaica
  • Plays, Theatre, Playwrights