Porgy: A play in four acts

London: Ernest Benn, Limited, 1929. FIRST UK EDITION. 8vo, pp. xxi, [iii], 203, [1]. Original brown cloth, orange lettering to spine. Chip and wear to head of spine, bruising and wear to bottom extremities, blotching to lower board. Top edge dusty, fore-edge a little spotted. Feps lightly toned, pushing to bottom corner of a couple of early signatures, short closed tears to top edges of pp. 89-104, reaching 2cm at pp. 103-4, text unaffected. Else, pleasingly clean and tidy. Very good. Unusual in the trade, though fairly well represented in British and Irish research libraries. 'With an Introduction on the American Negro in Art' by Du Bose Heyward. Publication of the British edition of the Heywards' play (plus other international editions) coincided with an eleven-week European tour of Porgy in spring 1929. It opened without previews on 10 April at His Majesty's Theatre, London and closed on 1 June 1929. While British theatre-goers welcomed the Porgy cast, with the opening night apparently receiving 12 curtain calls, and the production subsequently playing to packed audiences, members of the cast struggled to find accommodation in the capital (Noonan, 2012). Adapted from Heyward's 1925 slim hit of a novel by Du Bose and his wife Dorothy, the Doubleday Page & Co/ Theatre Guild Acting Version of Porgy (in orange wrappers) was published in 1927, followed by the Doubleday, Doran & Co./ Theatre Guild's 'New Edition' (jacketed and bound in black boards) in 1928. The play formed the basis for Gershwin's libretto, Porgy & Bess (1935). The British edition comprises American pages bound in Ernest Benn's sober brown boards and features a different title page. Ellen Noonan (2012) The Strange Career of Porgy & Bess. Chapel Hill: UNC Press.