First printing of Spark's only play, inscribed with love to a "Howard," likely poet Howard Sergeant, with whom Spark was briefly involved in earlier years.
Near fine in very good jacket.
Price: $500.00
"You just mind your own business and leave your mother's neurosis alone. She's had it as long as I've known her, and if it's good enough for me it's good enough for you."
Bewilderingly witty, like a Tom Stoppard with teeth as well as brains. Of the play's nine characters, just three are men, all helpfully named "Charlie" so as not to tax an audience's power of remembrance in trivial matters. DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY is, superficially and in part, about what the previous century was pleased to call the "problem" of women "having it all," where "it all" is defined as babies, husbands, and monographs on Assyrian paleography; but it is not a superficial piece, least of all in its treatment of women's varied personal and professional ambitions and obligations as compelling instances of the universally human.
Read more: Maley, "Dr. Spark, I presume?", Scottish Book Trust.
First edition. London: Macmillian & Co Ltd, 1963. 8.5'' x 5.5''. Original royal blue cloth with gilt-lettered spine. In original unclipped (18s) dust jacket. [6], 110 pages. Inscribed by Spark to front free endpaper: "Howard / Love from Muriel". Minor edgewear to boards; light soil to upper edge of page block. Several small tears and faint chipping to upper edge and spine ends of jacket; moderate toning to jacket verso.
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