Peer Gynt (The Heritage Press)

New York: The Heritage Press, 1957. Reissue. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 10x8x1. Krohg, Per. Includes publisher's slipcase and Sandglass insert Number X:21. Spine toned with a few light spots, slipcase edges faded, a couple spots along slipcase edge. 1957 Hard Cover. 314 pp. 10 1/2 x 7 3/4. Translated by William and Charles Archer, illustrations by Per Krohg. "Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. Interpreted in its day as a satire on the Norwegian personality, Peer Gynt is the story of a life based on avoidance. A first edition of 1,250 copies was published on 14 November 1867 in Copenhagen. Despite having swiftly sold out, a re-print of 2,000 copies, which followed after 14 days, did not sell well and was not exhausted until 1874. While Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson admired the play's "satire in Norwegian egotism, narrowness, and self-sufficiency" and described it as "magnificent", Hans Christian Andersen, Georg Brandes and Clemens Petersen all joined a widespread hostility. Enraged by Petersen's criticisms in particular, Ibsen defended his work by arguing that it "is poetry; and if it isn't, it will become such. The conception of poetry in our country, in Norway, shall shape itself according to this book." Despite this defense of his poetic achievement in Peer Gynt, the play was his last to employ verse; from The League of Youth (1869) onwards, Ibsen was to write drama only in prose.