BYGG DIG ALLT HOGRE BONINGAR (MORE STATELY MANSIONS) by O'Neill, Eugene - 1962

[ Stockholm: Royal Dramatic Theatre, 1962. Cloth backed boards, printed and manuscript labels. Quarto. 192 leaves, mimeographed on rectos only. Corners bumped, slight sunning at edges, otherwise fine. Mimeographed playscript of the highly important Swedish translation, from the unpublished manuscript, by Karl Ragnar Gierow and Sven Barthel. The history of this translation is fundamental to the history of the text eventually published in English by Yale University Press in 1964, and is discussed by Donald Gallup on pp. 291-5 of PIGEONS ON THE GRANITE (New Haven 1988). In summary, O'Neill had left the play unfinished, and specified that the script was to be destroyed in the event of his death, but a revised typescript had been deposited inadvertently with other papers in the Beinecke Library in 1951. In 1957, Carlotta O'Neill apprised Gierow, who had staged a successful Swedish adaptation of LONG DAY'S JOURNEY..., of its existence, and he undertook the task of an edited, translated adaptation which, although featuring excisions, remained true to what remained of O'Neill's text. When the play was produced in November of 1962, the consensus was that the play merited publication in English, and the establishment of the English text was undertaken by Donald Gallup by collating the original typescript, the Swedish translation, and the Swedish adaptation for the stage. The text here present would appear to be that of the verbatim Swedish translation by Barthel and Girow, as it includes O'Neill's descriptions of characters and sets, as well as the three scene format of Act One (which had been compressed in the adaptation). However, the epilogue, which was not included in the Swedish adaptation, does not appear to be included here. There are a few manuscript corrections or insertions in an unknown hand scattered throughout, several amounting to the addition of a line or two. A highly important script of significance transcending that of most simple translations.