Love's Graduate: A Comedy

Oxford: Printed at the Private Press of H. Daniel, 1885, 1885. First Daniel Press edition, number 45 of 150 numbered copies. NCBEL I, 1699. Vellum and boards somewhat rubbed and soiled; text fine, though some signatures are lightly printed.. 4to, original quarter vellum, blue paper boards, untrimmed. An interesting later edition of a play originally entitled A Cure for the Cuckhold: A Pleasant Comedy, published by bookseller Francis Kirkman in 1661 and perhaps speciously attributed to John Webster and William Rowley. Later critics, Edmund Gosse among them, thought that Rowley's contribution was crude (he was "a rough playwright of the Jacobean age") and that Webster's part of the play stood alone as a "charming domestic drama of English country life." Gosse, with the help of S. Spring-Rice and the printer Henry Daniel, sought to correct that, and they published this edition, under the new title Love's Graduate: A Comedy, which omitted the contributions attributed to Rowley. In the Prefatory Essay, Gosse explains his editorial decisions and the play's history. He does not question the attribution, though ESTC notes that it is doubtful. Bookplate of the Typographic Library and Museum of the American Type Founders Company on the front paste-down.