Jumpers
STOPPARD, Tom. Jumpers.
London: Faber and Faber, 1972
8vo., card wraps with integral orange and black printed dustwrapper (price clipped); pp. [viii], 9-91, [iii]; slight lean and overall shelf wear; one small nick to head of spine, and one very minor spot to outer edge; else a bright copy.
First edition, the card wrapper issue, published simultaneously with the casebound issue. This copy inscribed by the playwright on the title page: “To Speedy - best wishes! Tom”. The recipient is Andrew Speed, Stage Manager at the National Theatre. Also loosely inserted is a postcard from the National Theatre, showing Laurence Olivier playing James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night, signed by Olivier in blue biro (small corner crease). Stoppard’s two-act stage play was first performed at the Old Vic Theatre in March 1972. In it, a professor of moral philosophy is placed in a murder mystery thriller alongside a slew of radical gymnasts.
In an article for the New Yorker (December 1977), theatre critic Kenneth Tynan recalls a summer when Stoppard read an early draft of Jumpers to a small audience consisting of himself, Laurence Olivier and John Dexter (then associate director of the National Theatre). “Olivier had come straight from an exhausting rehearsal”, he writes. “Stoppard arrived with the text and a sheaf of large white cards, each bearing the name of one of the characters. We had a few glasses of wine, after which Stoppard announced that he would read the play standing at a table, holding up the appropriate card to indicate who was speaking. What ensued was a gradual descent into chaos. Jumpers (which was then called And Now the Incredible Jasmin Jumpers) is a complex work with a big cast, and before long Stoppard had got his cards hopelessly mixed up. Within an hour, Olivier had fallen asleep. Stoppard gallantly pressed on, and I have a vivid memory of him, desperate in the gathering dusk, frantically shuffling his precious pages and brandishing his cards, like a panicky magician whose tricks are blowing up in his face. After two hours, he had got no farther than the end of Act I.”
An interesting association copy.
STOPPARD, Tom. Jumpers.
London: Faber and Faber, 1972
8vo., card wraps with integral orange and black printed dustwrapper (price clipped); pp. [viii], 9-91, [iii]; slight lean and overall shelf wear; one small nick to head of spine, and one very minor spot to outer edge; else a bright copy.
First edition, the card wrapper issue, published simultaneously with the casebound issue. This copy inscribed by the playwright on the title page: “To Speedy - best wishes! Tom”. The recipient is Andrew Speed, Stage Manager at the National Theatre. Also loosely inserted is a postcard from the National Theatre, showing Laurence Olivier playing James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night, signed by Olivier in blue biro (small corner crease). Stoppard’s two-act stage play was first performed at the Old Vic Theatre in March 1972. In it, a professor of moral philosophy is placed in a murder mystery thriller alongside a slew of radical gymnasts.
In an article for the New Yorker (December 1977), theatre critic Kenneth Tynan recalls a summer when Stoppard read an early draft of Jumpers to a small audience consisting of himself, Laurence Olivier and John Dexter (then associate director of the National Theatre). “Olivier had come straight from an exhausting rehearsal”, he writes. “Stoppard arrived with the text and a sheaf of large white cards, each bearing the name of one of the characters. We had a few glasses of wine, after which Stoppard announced that he would read the play standing at a table, holding up the appropriate card to indicate who was speaking. What ensued was a gradual descent into chaos. Jumpers (which was then called And Now the Incredible Jasmin Jumpers) is a complex work with a big cast, and before long Stoppard had got his cards hopelessly mixed up. Within an hour, Olivier had fallen asleep. Stoppard gallantly pressed on, and I have a vivid memory of him, desperate in the gathering dusk, frantically shuffling his precious pages and brandishing his cards, like a panicky magician whose tricks are blowing up in his face. After two hours, he had got no farther than the end of Act I.”
An interesting association copy.
STOPPARD, Tom. Jumpers.
London: Faber and Faber, 1972
8vo., card wraps with integral orange and black printed dustwrapper (price clipped); pp. [viii], 9-91, [iii]; slight lean and overall shelf wear; one small nick to head of spine, and one very minor spot to outer edge; else a bright copy.
First edition, the card wrapper issue, published simultaneously with the casebound issue. This copy inscribed by the playwright on the title page: “To Speedy - best wishes! Tom”. The recipient is Andrew Speed, Stage Manager at the National Theatre. Also loosely inserted is a postcard from the National Theatre, showing Laurence Olivier playing James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night, signed by Olivier in blue biro (small corner crease). Stoppard’s two-act stage play was first performed at the Old Vic Theatre in March 1972. In it, a professor of moral philosophy is placed in a murder mystery thriller alongside a slew of radical gymnasts.
In an article for the New Yorker (December 1977), theatre critic Kenneth Tynan recalls a summer when Stoppard read an early draft of Jumpers to a small audience consisting of himself, Laurence Olivier and John Dexter (then associate director of the National Theatre). “Olivier had come straight from an exhausting rehearsal”, he writes. “Stoppard arrived with the text and a sheaf of large white cards, each bearing the name of one of the characters. We had a few glasses of wine, after which Stoppard announced that he would read the play standing at a table, holding up the appropriate card to indicate who was speaking. What ensued was a gradual descent into chaos. Jumpers (which was then called And Now the Incredible Jasmin Jumpers) is a complex work with a big cast, and before long Stoppard had got his cards hopelessly mixed up. Within an hour, Olivier had fallen asleep. Stoppard gallantly pressed on, and I have a vivid memory of him, desperate in the gathering dusk, frantically shuffling his precious pages and brandishing his cards, like a panicky magician whose tricks are blowing up in his face. After two hours, he had got no farther than the end of Act I.”
An interesting association copy.