12mo. xii, 376; 380; 372pp. With an engraved portrait frontispiece of the author to Vol I (included in pagination). Contemporary gilt-tooled sprinkled sheep, red morocco lettering-pieces. Rubbed, with some cracking to joints (but all boards firmly attached), some old worm tracks to foot of spines of Vols. I-II. With the armorial bookplate of Vane Londonderry to each FEP, and the later bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst to FFEP of Vol. I.

The first collected edition of the works of playwright and actress Susanna Centlivre (bap. 1667?, d. 1723), preceded by an entertaining six-page life of the author, which provides details of her education and the contemporary success of several of her dramas, in addition to noting the death of her father when Centlivre was just nine.

After the tremendous success secured by her gambling comedy The Gamester (London, 1709), Centlivre was firmly established amongst the pantheon of contemporary professional playwrights by the second decade of the eighteenth-century. Her later works were no longer published anonymously; indeed, Edmund Curll paid her 20 Guineas for the copyright of her only tragedy, The Cruel Gift (London, 1717). Nonetheless, no collected edition of her works appeared until almost 40 years after her death; whilst reference is made to a four volume 'Dramatical Works' being 'In the Press' in 1732 and 1736, it was evidently never published.