And So To Bed"; A Comedy in Three Acts

London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1927. Signed and numbered Limited First U. K. Edition, Number 44 of 200. Hardcover. Good/Clear plastic dust wrapper present. Format is approximately 5.25 inches by 7.75 inches. [12], 140 pages. Sticker at back cover. Bookplate of Roland Keith Young inside front cover, featuring the image of a penguin. He was a noted artist. James Bernard Fagan (18 May 1873 - 17 February 1933) was an Irish-born actor, theatre manager, producer and playwright in England. After turning from the law to the stage, Fagan began an acting career, including four years from 1895 to 1899 with Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company at Her Majesty's Theatre. He then began writing plays, returning eventually to acting during World War I. In 1920 he took over London's Court Theatre as a Shakespearean playhouse and soon began to produce plays at other West End theatres. His adaptation of Treasure Island in 1922 was a hit and became an annual Christmas event. He was the first manager of the Oxford Playhouse for several years in the 1920s. As a producer, he popularized Anton Chekhov and Se�n O'Casey in Britain. In 1929, he was a director of the Festival Theatre, Cambridge. Several of his plays were adapted for film, and he moved to Hollywood in his last years. At the Oxford, Fagan produced Full Moon, the first play by Emlyn Williams, and gave him a role in his own play, And So to Bed (1926), based on the life of Samuel Pepys, in London. The Play of Samuel Pepys, father of British Admiralty, is set after Pepys makes his last entry in his diary. Originally produced at the Queen's Theatre, London and starring Allan Jeayes and Edmund Gwenn. A musical adaptation of J.B. Fagan's famous play, And So To Bed opened in London in October 1951. And so to bed is an expression often used by Samuel Pepys at the end of his day's diary entry. Samuel Pepys FRS (23 February 1633 - 26 May 1703) was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Pepys had no maritime experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalization of the Royal Navy. The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London.