The Playboy of the Western World. Edited by Stanley Sultan, with Six Brush Drawings by Louis Le Brocquy. Massachusetts: Imprint Society, 1970. Pp, 132. Full canary yellow buckram by John F. Newman (Dublin), with gilt portrait of Synge on front cover. Housed in matching slipcase, with publisher’s wrap-around band present. Ownership bookplate to front pastedown. A near fine copy, contents pages bright & clean.

Limited Edition of 1950 Numbered Copies, Signed Louis Le Brocquy & Stanley Sultan.

Synge’s masterpiece, illustrated in colour line from direct separations prepared by Louis Le Brocquy. Printed at the Dolmen Press in Dublin and designed by Liam Miller.

Playboy of the Western World is one of a number of plays produced during the period of the Anglo-Irish revival which has as a theme the rejection by the people of a deliverer form oppression. It has been described as the most vigorous dialogue written for the stage since Shakespeare. The play met with a storm of protest culminating in the Playboy Riots which took place in Dublin in 1908 and received similar treatment in the theatres of New York and Philadelphia.