Hay Fever
Published on 1. June 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
104 pages
978-1-350-35411-1 (ISBN)
Description
"This 1925 comedy of manners that's funny yet also unorthodox and unsettling... a celebration of abnormality and at the same time a disquieting study of both the pleasures and the pains of not being able to restrain oneself." - Evening Standard
When four guests, all invited by different members of the Bliss family, arrive for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead, they're expecting a idyllic retreat. But this peaceful promise is quickly trounced when the self-absorbed eccentricities of the Blisses are trained on the guests, who leave the country mansion humiliated and embarrassed.
First produced in 1925, Hay Fever is a technical masterpiece, seamlessly combining high farce with a comedy of manners, and delivering Coward his first major commercial success.
This new edition is published in Methuen Drama's iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 125th anniversary of Coward's birth and features a new introduction by Michael Billington.
When four guests, all invited by different members of the Bliss family, arrive for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead, they're expecting a idyllic retreat. But this peaceful promise is quickly trounced when the self-absorbed eccentricities of the Blisses are trained on the guests, who leave the country mansion humiliated and embarrassed.
First produced in 1925, Hay Fever is a technical masterpiece, seamlessly combining high farce with a comedy of manners, and delivering Coward his first major commercial success.
This new edition is published in Methuen Drama's iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 125th anniversary of Coward's birth and features a new introduction by Michael Billington.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight
115 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-35411-1 (9781350354111)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Persons
Noel Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington, Middlesex. He made his name as a playwright with The Vortex (1924), in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels (1925), Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1933), Design for Living (1933) and Blithe Spirit (1941). During the war he wrote screenplays such as Brief Encounter (1944) and In Which We Serve (1942). In the fifties he began a new career as a cabaret entertainer. He published volumes of verse and a novel (Pomp and Circumstance, 1960), two volumes of autobiography and four volumes of short stories: To Step Aside (1939), Star Quality (1951), Pretty Polly Barlow (1964) and Bon Voyage (1967). He was knighted in 1970 and died three years later in Jamaica.