The Third Party

New York: The Macaulay Company. Very Good. 1915. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [square and solid copy, light foxing/soiling to page edges, slight bump to bottom rear corner, one-time owner's name and (presumably) date of purchase inked on front endpaper]. (6 B&W photographs) Uncommon novel, a novelization of the play of the same name, a farce about a young fellow who's mistaken for a chaperon at a fashionable London restaurant, and decides to play along and adopt the role. The play a respectable New York run (104 performances) after an August 1914 opening, and then went on the road (I've found reviews of productions in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and other cities well into 1915. The six photographs that illustrate the text are apparently from the original stage production, with leading man Taylor Holmes pictured in several scenes (although oddly, the book's theatrical antecedents are in no way mentioned or acknowledged in the book itself, which must have left contemporary readers somewhat perplexed about who the people in these photos were). One review of the New York production noted that it "was acted in London as 'The Chaperon' and some of the Western cities, notably Chicago, enjoyed it for some time last year in its present form." (It's unclear to me if "Frederic Arthur Stanley" was actually the author's name, although a writer by that name is credited in OCLC with one other book, "Lord Steene's Indiscretion" (1917); most contemporary American reviews of the play credit it to "Frederic [or Frederick] Arthur" and Jocelyn Brandon, as does the Internet Broadway Database, with some sort of additional adaptation by a Mark Swan.) . (Inventory #: 15366)