First one volume edition.   Loosely inserted is a programme for the Kingsway Theatre production of The Dynasts, abridged for the stage by Granville Barker.    Hardy wrote a Prologue and Epilogue specially for this production which appear for the first time in this programme.

8vo., original green cloth lettered in gilt on spine.

In November 1914, only months after the onset of the Great War, the Kingsway Theatre in London was the scene of one of the more unusual theatrical events of the period.  Harley Granville Barker presented his version of Thomas Hardy's epic-drama of the Napoleonic Wars, The Dynasts, the only professional production ever attempted of this seemingly unstageable work.  Having gained the author's permission, Barker carefully edited the three-volume work into a three-act, twenty-seven scene script which yet retained the kaleidoscopic quality of Hardy's original. Rather than a "well made play," The Dynasts proved itself to be in performance what the poet intended it should be mentally, a "spectacle."  (Theatre of the Mind: Hardy's The Dynasts and the Question of Form by Suzanne J. Flynn )