PLAY PARADE: THE COLLECTED PLAYS OF NOËL COWARD, VOLUME FIVE. Including the plays: Pacific 1860, "Peace in Our Time", Relative Values, Quadrille, and Blithe Spirit.

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy. Original grey cloth, the spine lettered in gilt to a black label, the author's signature stamped in gilt to the front panel, the publisher's monogram in blind to the lower edge of the rear panel, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Fore- and upper page block edges a little toned, with a couple of tiny diagonal creases to the upper outer corners of a handful of pages. In the lightly toned dustwrapper, nicked to corners and spine tips, the rubbed upper spine edge with a couple of short (near) closed tears to the folds. Not price-clipped (25s net to the front flap). Altogether, a sound, presentable copy with an inscription showing the author's talent for wordplay.

Inscribed by the author in red ink to the front free endpaper, "For Polly Mill / with, love / Noël". The recipient, homophonically addressed, is Paul-Emile Seidmann, a doctor married to Ginette Spanier, director of the House of Balmain, the fashion house founded by Pierre Balmain and patronised by such luminaries as Ava Gardner, Brigitte Bardot, and Marlene Dietrich. Coward met the couple while holidaying in France during the summer of 1946 and they became, according to the editors of Coward's diaries, the "closest of Noël's Parisian friends", amply borne out in the number of affectionate mentions of the couple in the diary itself. Philip Hoare, in his biography of Coward, notes that the author affectionately nicknamed Seidmann 'Marie-Antoinette'. Coward also smuggles Seidmann's name (without the final 'n') into his 1959 play 'Look After Lulu!' (an adaptation of a Feydeau farce) as 'Mayor of the District' (the name mentioned just once). ('The Noël Coward Diaries' edited by Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley [London, 1982]; Philip Hoare, 'Noël Coward: A Biography' [London, 1995]; Cole B-78).