Books

First deluxe edition in English, number 2 of 100 copies only on large paper. This edition preserves the text of the play as performed at its London debut on 20 April 1891, directed by and starring Elizabeth Robins, "Ibsen's High Priestess", whose portrait appears on the front wrapper. On 20 April, the first British performance of the play premiered at London's Vaudeville Theatre, directed by Elizabeth Robins and Marion Lea, two American actresses whose frustration with the stifling English theatre scene had led them to establish their own joint venture. Hearing of a new Ibsen play with a woman's name as the title, they read Gosse's translation and decided it would be their first production, starring Robins as Hedda and Lea as Thea. Robins studied the original Dano-Norwegian to help her edit the text for the stage: "I found myself coming close and closer till I had Hedda in my bones" (quoted by Gates). It was a resounding success and had the longest run to date of any Ibsen play in London. This edition was published on 1 June 1891 to capitalize on the production's success, with photomezzotype portraits of Robins and Lea, whose vital portrayals of complex women continued to, as George Bernard Shaw noted, "agitate the stage" (quoted in Powell). Hedda Gabler premiered at the Residenztheater in Munich on 31 January 1891. Ibsen's international fame saw the work published and performed in Berlin, Copenhagen, New York, and London within months. The play was first printed in Dano-Norwegian by Heinemann on 11 December 1890 in an edition of 12 copies only, under the illusion that this was necessary to secure copyright. This was followed five days later by a simultaneous publication in Dano-Norwegian by Gyldendal in Copenhagen and in English by Walter F. Baker in Boston, followed by Heinemann's publication, translated into English by Edmund Gosse, on 20 January 1891. This edition also includes a glowing preface by the original translator, Gosse, praising Robins who "elucidated, to an extraordinary degree, the poet's intention". Den Internasjonale Ibsen Bibliografien ("The International Ibsen Bibliography"); Printing and the Mind of Man 375 (first edition). Joanne E. Gates, "Elizabeth Robins and the 1891 Production of Hedda Gabler", Modern Drama, vol. 28, no. 4, 1985; Kerry Powell, Women and Victorian Theatre, 1997. Large octavo. Original cream wrappers lettered in blue, portrait of Elizabeth Robins on front wrapper in blue, edges unopened. Housed in a custom blue morocco-backed folding box. Photogravure portrait frontispiece of the author, photomezzotype portraits of Marion Lea and Elizabeth Robins. Two short closed tears at foot of spine, trivial chip at head, wrappers slightly detached from text block at head of spine and at front inner hinge, occasional foxing to contents: a bright and pleasing copy, in very good condition.

Hedda Gabler is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 and has since become one of Ibsen's most notable works. It centers on the life of Hedda Gabler, an aristocratic woman trapped in a conventional society.