First Edition ‘Look Back in Anger’ one to watch

A special copy of playwright John Osborne’s seminal play Look Back in Anger comes up for sale in London next month. The presentation first edition, including an original draft page for the beginning of Act 1, is expected to bring £3,000-4,000 as part of the November 27 sale of Books and Works on Paper at Chiswick Auctions.

Written in 17 days in a deck chair on Morcombe Pier, Osborne’s strongly autobiographical piece set in a one-room flat in the Midlands premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in May 1956. The press release called the author an ‘angry young man’, a phrase that came to represent a new movement in 1950s British theatre.

This printed copy of the play’s ‘kitchen sink realism’ is offered together with a printing of his follow-up play The Entertainer. Both were given by Osborne to his friend and occasional co-writer Anthony Creighton. During the mid-1950s, they lived together on an ‘old Rhine-barge’, moored near Chiswick Bridge.

Look Back in Anger is inscribed to the front free endpaper: ‘January 1957, With my love, gratitude and remembrance always. And a big look forward for us all. Bless you. Johnny’. Retaining its original pictorial dust jacket, it is accompanied by a handwritten draft page for the beginning of Act 1 that – while close to the published text – features several working corrections. Anthony Creighton had written to the reverse: ‘This first page of Look Back in Anger was torn out of John’s book with great jubilation. It’s finished! And this page is for you!’ he said. An additional note explains that some discolouration ‘was due to living on my old Rhine-barge on the Thames – rather damp! – but they were the best years…’ 

The dedication copy of The Entertainer is similarly inscribed by Osborne: ‘12.9.57 My love, gratitude and admiration always’ with Creighton adding: ‘John gave me this copy after we had been touring together in theatres around the country – Paradise Street and Claypit Lane the digs we shared at the time’. 

Look Back in Anger continues to attract audiences today – with the play currently on at The Almeida theatre.