Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

ELIOT, T.S.

Item Number: 133622

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939.

First edition of Eliot’s beloved collection of whimsical feline poems which served as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1981 megamusical phenomenon Cats. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket illustration by T.S. Eliot.

Eliot wrote the poems contained in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in the 1930s and included them, under his assumed name "Old Possum", in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939, with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley. Andrew Lloyd Webber began setting Eliot's poems to music in 1977, and the compositions were first presented as a song cycle in 1980. Producer Cameron Mackintosh then recruited director Trevor Nunn and choreographer Gillian Lynne to turn the songs into a complete musical. Cats opened to positive reviews at the New London Theatre in the West End in 1981 and then to mixed reviews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 1982. It won numerous awards including Best Musical at both the Laurence Olivier and Tony Awards. Despite its unusual premise that deterred investors initially, the musical turned out to be an unprecedented commercial success, with a worldwide gross of US$3.5 billion by 2012. Cats started the megamusical phenomenon, establishing a global market for musical theatre and directing the industry's focus to big-budget blockbusters, as well as family- and tourist-friendly shows. The musical's profound but polarizing influence also reshaped the aesthetic, technology, and marketing of the medium. Cats was adapted into a direct-to-video film in 1998, and a feature film adaptation directed by Tom Hooper in 2019.