Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in the first edition, a copy of the paper-covered issue with the front panel of its printed wrapper

IBSEN, Henrik. Hedda Gabler. Skuespil i fire akter. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag (F. Hegel & Søn), printed by Græbes Bogtrykkeri, 1890. First edition, the Copenhagen trade issue. Octavo, pp. [4], 236, with the title (its verso announcing authorised English, German and French translations to appear at about the same time) and the fly-title with the cast list on its verso. Bound in the twentieth century in green marbled paper covers with a grey cloth spine, the upper panel of the original printed front wrapper laid down on the front cover. Halvorsen p. 102; PMM 375.

Published in Copenhagen and Kristiania on 16 December 1890 in an edition of 10,000 copies, with 150 more printed probably for critics and other recipients, at 3 kroner, or 4 kroner 35 øre in an elegant binding (Henrik Ibsens skrifter). Gyldendal also sent twelve copies to William Heinemann in London, who gave them a new title leaf and published them on 11 December to secure the English rights, so this Copenhagen issue followed the London copyright issue by five days. The present copy was issued in printed paper wrappers, and the front panel survives.

Notes

Ibsen wrote Hedda Gabler in Munich in 1890, and it was the last of his plays published while he lived abroad. Its heroine, the daughter of the late General Gabler, has just returned from her honeymoon with Jørgen Tesman, a research fellow in cultural history. In under two days she burns the manuscript of Ejlert Løvborg’s new book, puts one of her father’s pistols into his hands, and at last turns the second on herself. Ibsen explained the title to his French translator, Count Moritz Prozor, on 4 December 1890, twelve days before publication. He meant it “to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father’s daughter than as her husband’s wife,” and he had wanted “to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day” (Letters of Henrik Ibsen, 1905, no. 219).

Many of the first Scandinavian reviewers found Hedda incomprehensible, even monstrous, and the premiere at the Residenztheater in Munich on 31 January 1891, which Ibsen attended, divided its audience. The play held the stage all the same. Printing and the Mind of Man chose it to represent Ibsen “as possibly his most frequently performed play in the modern theatre” (PMM 375), and Michael Meyer judged it “perhaps the most universally admired of Ibsen’s plays, the most frequently performed (in England, at any rate)” (Henrik Ibsen, III, 1971, pp. 158–59).

Very good. A sound copy in a plain later binding with modern endpapers. The mounted front wrapper panel is soiled and spotted. Ownership inscription of Valérie Loewy at the head of the title, with a pencilled number at upper right. The paper is lightly and evenly toned with a few scattered spots, and the text is otherwise clean. Only the front wrapper panel is preserved.

References

J. B. Halvorsen, Bibliografiske Oplysninger til Henrik Ibsens Samlede Værker (Copenhagen, 1901), p. 102; Henrik Ibsens skrifter, vol. 9 (2009), with V. Ystad’s introduction and C. Janss’s textual account (online edition, University of Oslo); J. Carter and P. H. Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967), 375; M. Meyer, Henrik Ibsen. The Top of a Cold Mountain, 1883–1906 (London, 1971), pp. 158–59; Letters of Henrik Ibsen, trans. J. N. Laurvik and M. Morison (New York, 1905), no. 219, p. 435.

Hedda Gabler, her father’s daughter, in the first edition of December 1890.

Offered by Atelier Zweig LLC. Shipped insured, with signature on delivery.