ENDS AND ODDS: Plays and Sketches.

First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper showing a photographic portrait of the author on the front panel. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the fine, unclipped dustwrapper (£2.75 net to the front flap). A lovely copy.

In spite of the endearing title, this is a notably generous little volume. The short plays, 'That Time' and 'Footfalls' were first performed during the season of Beckett's plays mounted at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1976 to mark the author's seventieth birthday. One of the two sketches for radio included had been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Beckett's birthday itself (13th April 1976), with a cast comprising of Harold Pinter, Billie Whitelaw, and Patrick Magee. The two new television pieces, 'Ghost Trio' and '...but the clouds' were printed here in advance of their broadcast premieres in the Spring of 1977, the same programme also including the television version of, 'Not I' (1973), the text of which is printed here for the first time since the chapbook published to coincide with the staged version.