Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue.

SHAW, George Bernard [John Steinbeck].

$125.00

Item Number: 114807

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1936.

Early printing of one of Shaw’s major works. Octavo, original cloth, with illustrations from the play as presented by Katharine Cornell courtesy of Vandamm Studio. From the library of American actor Zachary Scott, the first husband of Elaine Scott who later married writer John Steinbeck. Scott is best remembered for his many roles as villains and “mystery men” in dozens of musical comedies, film noirs, and psychological thrillers throughout the 1940s and 50s including Hollywood Canteen, The Unfaithful, Shotgun, Man in the Shadow, and The Young One. In very good condition with Scott’s bookplate to the pastedown.

T. S. Eliot, discussing Shaw's Saint Joan after its premiere in London in 1924, wrote that although Saint Joan was not the masterpiece that some claimed it to be, the play "seems to illustrate Mr. Shaw's mind more clearly than anything he has written before." Shaw wrote in the preface to the published text, "There are no villains in the piece. Crime, like disease, is not interesting: it is something to be done away with by general consent, and that is all [there is] about it. It is what men do at their best, with good intentions, and what normal men and women find that they must and will do in spite of their intentions, that really concern us."