A Streetcar Named Desire
New York: New Directions, 1947. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher's illustrated paper-covered boards, original illustrated dust jacket.
"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." First edition of towering playwright Tennessee Williams’s landmark play, published by his "literary home" New Directions. One of the most influential works in the history of American theater, the play chronicles the clash between southern belle Blanche DuBois and her brutish brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. The play premiered in 1947 at the Barrymore Theatre in New York, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, and Karl Malden. The production is credited for launching the 24-year-old Brando, who also starred in the film adaptation in 1961, into international stardom. Dust jacket designed by Alvin Lustig, who took a revolutionary approach to book cover design in the 1940s. Rather than attempting to illustrate a book in one image, Lustig tried to gain a sense of the author’s "creative drive," and interpret it in his own style. He designed more than seventy dust jackets for New Directions, including all the dust jackets for New Directions’s issues of Williams’s work. Minor sunning and edgewear to boards, light offsetting to front endpapers from old clipping; price-clipped dust jacket with small patch of old sticker residue to upper flap, shallow chipping to spine-ends and flap-folds, some sunning to spine panel, and light rubbing and sunning to panels. Very good. Item #13240
$1,500.00