“ANTICIPATED AND INFLUENCED MUCH OF 20TH-CENTURY DRAMA”

PIRANDELLO, Luigi. Scamandro. Rome: no publisher, July 1909. Octavo, original parchment wrappers; pp. 59. Housed in a custom full morocco clamshell box. $2500.

First and only separate edition of the first published play by the winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature, probably privately printed for friends in a very small number of copies. Very rare.

"As a writer of poetry, short stories, novels, essays and drama, Pirandello's career is marked by change, evolution, and development of concepts and themes that anticipated and influenced much of 20th-century drama. His contributions include several of the absolute hallmarks of the modern stage" (Pribic, 330). While Scamandro cannot claim to rank among such Pirandello masterpieces as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) or Enrico IV (Henry IV), it is his first published play and points the way toward his later landmarks; it is correspondingly much more difficult to obtain in first edition, as it comes from the period before his theatrical success and was privately printed. The printed dedication reads: "A Guido Treves e Antonietta Pesenti, sposi." Scamandro first appeared serialized in Rivista di Roma, Anno 10, numbers 12-13 (25 June-10 July 1906). This is the first edition in book form. Text in Italian. Gambetti-Vezzosi, 359. Lo Vecchio Musti, 82. Spaducci, 228.

Some neat repairs to spine. An extremely good copy, very scarce.