First Edition of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger With First Page of Draft Script to Auction

A presentation first edition of John Osborne’s seminal play Look Back in Anger will go under the hammer at Chiswick Auctions next month, including an original draft page for the beginning of Act 1.

The lot is expected to bring £3,000 - £4,000 as part of the November 28 sale of Books and Works on Paper.

Said to have been written in 17 days in a deckchair on Morcombe Pier, Osborne’s strongly autobiographical piece set in a one-room flat in the Midlands premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in May 1956. The press release called the author an "angry young man", a phrase that came to represent a new movement in 1950s British theatre. 

This printed copy of the play’s ‘kitchen sink realism’ is offered together with a printing of his follow-up play The Entertainer. Both were given by Osborne to his friend and occasional co-writer Anthony Creighton. During the mid-1950s they lived together on an old Rhine-barge moored near Chiswick Bridge in London.

Look Back in Anger is inscribed to the front free endpaper, "January 1957, With my love, gratitude and remembrance always. And a big look forward for us all. Bless you. Johnny". Complete with its original pictorial dust jacket, it is accompanied by a handwritten draft page for the beginning of Act 1 that, although close to the published text, features several working corrections. Anthony Creighton had written to the reverse: “This first page of Look Back in Anger was torn out of John’s book with great jubilation. It’s finished! And this page is for you!” he said. An additional note explains that some discolouration "was due to living on my old Rhine-barge on the Thames - rather damp! - but they were the best years…"

The dedication copy of The Entertainer is similarly inscribed by Osborne, "12.9.57 My love, gratitude and admiration always" with Creighton adding, "John gave me this copy after we had been touring together in theatres around the country - Paradise Street and Claypit Lane the digs we shared at the time".

Look Back in Anger is currently running at The Almeida theatre in London.