The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill andversatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s.

The volume containshis best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit whenit was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and reparteehave ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noel Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gaveme more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Notespecially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or itsproduction but as a whole." The...

Volume Four of Noel Coward's plays contains a selection of Coward'splays from the thirties and forties which includes Blithe Spirit, acomedy that centres around the spirit medium Madame Arcati. The playthat mocks sudden death was produced at precisely the moment when bombswere bringing it to Britain "I shall ever be grateful, for the almostpsychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days duringone of the darkest years of the war." The play was for years thelongest-running comedy in the history of British theatre. PresentLaughter follows the life of...

Containing Coward's best work from the last two decades of his life, this volume includes Relative Values, which ran for over a year in1951-2, Look After Lulu (1959), his perennially popular Feydeauadaptation, Waiting in the Wings (1960), a bravura piece set in a homefor retired actresses, and Suite in Three Keys (1965), a trilogy ofplays which gave Coward his last roles on stage. The volume isintroduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer, and includesan extensive chronology of Coward's work.

This volume brings together Coward's celebrated verse, from snappy epigrams to seven-hundred-line short stories such as 'P&O 1930' and 'Not Yet the Dodo'; from moving war-time encounters to satirical barbs at familiar Coward targets; and from personal reminiscences to occasional verse such as his tribute to Ivor Novello or his counter-attack on Graham Greene.

Includes an introduction by Martin Tickner and Coward's long-time companion, Graham Payn.

The Seventh volume in the Coward Collection. On Quadrille "Miss Fontanne plays the madcap Marchioness with thecrackle and sheen of a five-pound note. Her eyes mock marvelously, hervoice cuts like a knife into a wedding cake, and the scene in ActThree, on the eve of her elopement with Mr. Lung, is as delicious ascrushed ice." Evening Standard, 1952.

"The idea of Peace in Our Time,"Coward wrote "was conceived in Paris shortly after the Liberation. . .I began to suspect that the physical effect of four years intermittentbombing is far less damaging to the intrinsic...

Philip Hoare, in his biography of Coward described Semi-Monde as his "most daring play to date. In a chic Parisian hotel, a series of sexualpairings take place through rendezvous, arguments, infidelities andreconciliations: sexual deviance is undisguised...set in the bisexual1920s, the play could easily be populated by characters of Coward'ssociety."

Point Valaine is "thedrama of a lurid episode of lust in the semi-tropics.. unmistakably thework of a master of the stage" (New York Times); South Sea Bubble whichconcerns "the Governor's lady in the Isle of Samolo...

The first single edition of Noel Coward's most controversial play.

"Only in Semi-Monde does Coward find a successful metaphor for the sexual complications that lie behind his posturing. Semi-Monde is easily the most visually daring of his comedies, and the most intellectually startling ... made up of sexually mischievous tableaux vivants and gets much nearer the homosexual knuckle than Coward's public image allowed." - (John Lahr, London Review of Books)

Written in 1926 and originally entitled Ritz Bar, Semi-Monde was considered too daring for its...

Coward's 'forgotten' play, published to tie in with its world premiere

In his wickedly funny final play, Noel Coward takes us behind the scenes of a new West End production. Conjuring up an authentic backstage world of talent and treachery, Coward creates a gallery of unforgettable characters; temperamental leading lady, ruthless director, jaded old troupers and, caught somewhere between them all, innocent young playwright. From tentative first rehearsal to triumphant opening night, the clash of egos becomes increasingly and hilariously bloody. But what emerges from the mayhem is a...

The definitive account, in his own words, of one of the most popular figures in British theatre.

The second and concluding volume of No?l Coward's legendary autobiography includes Future Indefinite and the unfinished Past Unconditional. With his trademark wit, Coward delivers anecdotes about his travels in South America, Hollywood encounters with an array of contemporary stars and directors, and his later theatrical successes, including the Broadway triumph of Design For Living. The showbiz glamour aside, we also encounter a middle-aged man coming to terms with a...

"I was photographed naked on a cushion very early in life, an insane, toothless smile slitting my face and pleats of fat overlapping me like an ill-fitting overcoat. Later, at the age of two, I was photographed again. This time in a lace dress, leaning against a garden roller and laughing hysterically. If these photographs can be found they will adorn this book."

Thus begins the life story of one of the most celebrated characters in British theatrical history, in the first of Coward's autobiographies, first published in 1937. Displaying an early dedication to the theatre, Present...