Fashion.
A Social Comedy About New York Life and Fashion
[Theater]. Mowatt, Anna Cora. Fashion; Or, Life in New York. A Comedy in Five Acts. With case of characters, stage business, costumes, relative positions, &c., &c. New York: Samuel French, [1849].
Small 8vo.; green and white clover-patterned decorated wraps, string-tied; paper label with handwritten title on front wrapper; wrappers and spine lightly worn, some pages evenly, lightly yellowed. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of this social comedy about life in fashionable New York. A witty comedy whose dramatis personae include “Adam Trueman, a farmer from Catteraugus”; “Colonel Howard, a New York merchant”; “Gertrude, a Governess”; “Prudence, a Maiden Lady of a certain age”; and “Mrs. Tiffany, a Lady who imagines herself fashionable”, amongst others. Anna Cora Mowatt, the author of this amusing romp through New York society, does not look up in the standard references. However, in 1967 John Gassner included her play in his Best Plays of the Early American Theatre (NY: Crown, 1967), and Ray Wemmlinger later penned an historical novel, written in the first person, about Mowatt, at one time considered “America’s first lady of the 19th century theater.” One description of his novel notes, “When her husband loses his fortune, she defies convention to go on the stage. She has a brilliant career, but her personal life is plagued by domineering men, physical illness (cured by mesmerism), and schizophrenia. She emerges a free soul whose play Fashion is performed today.”
(#5340)
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