Three Plays

London: Oxford University Press/ Humphrey Milford, 1931. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. vi, [2], 200. Quarter black cloth, printed paper title label to spine, monochrome paper boards, illustrated by Lynton Lamb. Fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Spare title label tipped in to final page. Slight bend to boards, spine and edges darkened, wear to head of spine, rubbed at extremities, bottom board shelf-soiled and scored. Front and rear toned, very occasional marks, else, clean and tight. A pleasing copy of an attractive pre-Inklings title and an early example of Lynton Lamb's designing for OUP. Very good. Three Plays comprises 'The Witch', 'The Chaste Wanton', and The Rite of the Passion,' interspersed with Songs of Taliessin. Williams noted that the plays "form a progression, and it is to accentuate this that I have enclosed them between poems which deal with the same progression under colour of one of the great English myths," namely, of King Arthur (of course). The poems are from an unfinished cycle, part of which appeared in Williams' 1930 Heroes and Kings, the first title published by The Sylvan Press. Charles Williams (1886-1945) was a British novelist, theological writer and Arthurian, who joined the Inklings when he moved to Oxford in 1939 with OUP, for which he was a reader. C. S. Lewis and Williams were already friends by then, having begun a correspondence a few years earlier, and upon meeting "our friendship rapidly grew inward to the bone" (Lewis cited in ODNB). Lynton Lamb (1907�1977) was a friend and colleague of Williams' at Amen House, OUP's London offices. The pair would also collaborate on another OUP project, Williams' 1938 Taliessin through Logres. Lamb had joined the press in 1930 to design bindings for prayer books and bibles, making this title an early example of his illustration for the press, for which he designed for many decades.