The Beggar's Opera

New York: The Heritage Press WYSIWYG pricing--no added shipping charge for standard shipping within USA. No date but 1947 or 1948. Tan cloth, greenish-brown buckram spine, brown titles & decorations, all edges dyed brown, xx, 113 pp, 12 full-page illustrations, decorations in preliminaries. Spine sunned, previous owner's name (dated 1948) on ffep. The Beggar's Opera, besides being entertaining theatre, is also a source for the social history of the London underworld of the early 18th century. It is peopled by whores, fences, pickpockets, highwaymen, thief-takers, and corrupt jailers and magistrates who will release a prisoner or allow an escape in return for an appropriate bribe. Every character in the play is a villain, but the thieves are not necessarliy more villainous than those who catch them. The copyright page of this edition notes that "The special contents of this edition are copyright 1937 by the Limited Editions Club for the George Macy Companies, Inc.," but the Heritage Club Sandglass (laid in) explains that this applies to A. P. Herbert's introduction and Mariette Lydis's illustrations, which were lithographs in the LEC edition and are reproduced here by sheet-fed gravure. The Heritage Press edition, about ten years after the LEC edition, adds the melodies of the songs, all of them airs popular in the 1720s, to the lyrics by John Gay. The musical decorations and the typesetting are also new in this edition. Shipping weight 3 lbs.. . VG/No dj. Illus. by Mariette Lydis. 28½ X 22 cm.