The Chalk Garden.

London: William Heinemann Ltd,, 1956. First edition, first impression, the author's own copy, with her inscription on the front free endpaper: "My first copy. Enid Bagnold, Rottingdean. August 22 - 1956". The playwright has made extensive annotations throughout Act I, and her note under the inscription records "Also used for French translation (Louise de Vilmorin)". If Louise de Vilmorin, a renowned French writer in her own right and acquaintance of Bagnold, did indeed translate the play from this copy, as Bagnold's note suggests, it was never published. An entirely separate French adaptation was staged at the Théâtre Hébertot in Paris in 1976. Although Enid Bagnold's other plays were not particularly successful, "she enjoyed one major triumph with The Chalk Garden (1955), which ran in London for two years and was described by Kenneth Tynan as possibly the finest English comedy since those of William Congreve" (ODNB). A film adaptation of The Chalk Garden, starring Deborah Kerr and Hayley Mills, was released in 1964, proving a box-office hit, and the play still enjoys popularity in the British theatre. Octavo. Original white boards, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. With photographic frontispiece and single photographic plate. A very good copy, lettering a little toned, boards and book block edge faintly foxed, minor bump to head of front board, in attractive foxed dust jacket with two short closed tears to rear panel.