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COWARD, Noël.

Present Indicative

Stock Code
105265
New York, Doubleday Doran & Company, Inc., 1937
£1,400

This unique copy inscribed by Coward to the film director David Lean (1908-1991), is doubly poignant in that it was Coward who gave Lean his first major break in directing, the latter having been hitherto, a film editor, albeit a well established one. In 1942, Noël Coward gave Lean the chance to co-direct with him the war film In Which We Serve (quoted in the inscription) and shortly after, with the encouragement of Coward, Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan launched a production company called Cineguild. For that firm Lean first directed adaptations of three plays by Coward the chronicle This Happy Breed (1944), the humorous ghost story Blithe Spirit (1945) and, most notably, the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945). Originally a box-office failure in England, Brief Encounter was presented at the very first Cannes film festival (1946), where it won almost unanimous praise as well as a

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Description

First edition, inscribed by the author: 'Please accept this dear David not merely as a souvenir of something that is past but as a talisman for the future. With my love and gratitude Noel Coward 'In Which we Serve'' 1941/42'; 8vo (225 x 155 mm); photographic frontispiece of the author and a further 30 illustrations, the usual age-toning, marginal finger-soiling to pp 138 & 138, with small marginal stain to latter, otherwise near-fine; contemporary full maroon morocco by Henry T. Wood, London, all edges gilt, offsetting to endpapers, very mild stain to upper board, rubbed at extremities but in all, sound and wholly original with not restoration.

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Stock ID:105265

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