First printing of one of the best-known American plays of the 20th century, tackling freedom of thought with the contemporary threat of McCarthyism as underlying subtext.
Very good in very good jacket.
Price: $500.00
"From what you've heard about this Darwin, do you think your wife would want to have him over for Sunday dinner?"
INHERIT THE WIND dramatizing the Scopes "Monkey" trial as fictionalized stand-ins for Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan battle for the sympathies of a jury and for the nation at large. Though criticized in some quarters for dramatizing a little too much – Lawrence and Lee make free use of composite characters, invented confrontations, and heightened passions, in a play that has shaped public perceptions of this episode in American history for decades – the playwrights acquitted themselves of any charge of misleading audiences, maintaining (truthfully) in their prefatory note that INHERIT THE WIND is not transcribed newsreel footage but a work of art: "INHERIT THE WIND does not pretend to be journalism. It is theatre. It is not 1925...It might have been yesterday. It might be tomorrow." Notably adapted to film in 1960 by Stanley Kramer, starring Spencer Tracey and Fredric March, and employing a screenwriter (Nedrick Young) who had himself been blacklisted.
First edition. (New York): (Random House), (1955). 8'' x 5.5''. Original grey cloth with black and white photographic paste-on to front board. Gilt-stamped publisher's device to front, gilt-lettered spine. Red topstain. In original unclipped ($2.75) dust jacket. Title and facing page illustrated with black and white photographs. [10], 162 pages. Front hinge cracked after endpaper but holding. Jacket with a couple spots of shallow chipping, the usual toning, and a bit of light staining to rear panel.
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