Quality Street. A comedy in four acts.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

London: Hodder & Stoughton 1913. Quarto bound in original full pictorial vellum with front cover and spine stamped in gilt and silk ties. Top edge gilt and other edges uncut. (viii 198pp.). With mounted colour frontispiece and printed tissue-guard 21 full-page mounted colour plates with printed tissue-guards and numerous in-text illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Limited edition of 1000 copies signed by the artist and numbered of which this is number 527. Fine large paper copy. Includes announcement card for an exhibition in London of the original water-colour drawings by Thomson. Scottish novelist and playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) is undoubtedly best known for his classic children's character Peter Pan the very much-loved 'boy who wouldn't grow up'. Quality Street is an example of one of Barrie's earlier plays which premiered in New York and London (where it proved especially popular) in 1901 and 1902 respectively. Set on Quality Street in a little English country town during the Napoleonic wars this is the delightfully amusing story of Miss Phoebe Throssel (and her alter ego Miss Livvy Phoebe's non-existent niece) and her fraught pursuit of love in the form of one dashing Valentine Brown; or her pursuit as Phoebe herself phrases it of "every woman's birthright" namely "to be petted and admired" (p. 77).