The King's Henchman: A Play in Three Acts - Artists' Edition Autographed by the Author and Composer and Containing Three Original Etchings of Joseph Urban's Stage Sets

131, [1] pp. Beige cloth spine and corners, green textured paper over boards, paper spine label with limitation number in red, matching number on slipcase label and limitation page. This limited edition of the famous poet's only opera (she wrote the libretto, Deems Taylor composed the music) was released the month after the first New York stage production on February 17, 1927, and preceded the trade edition, also published by Harper & Brothers, which was released in 1928. Millay won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and went on to use verse as a medium for her feminist activism. She also wrote verse-dramas and a highly-praised opera, The King's Henchman. Her novels appeared under the name Nancy Boyd, and she refused lucrative offers to publish them under her own name. Millay was a prominent social figure of New York City's Greenwich Village just as it was becoming known as a bohemian writer's colony, and she was noted for her uninhibited lifestyle, forming many passing relationships with both men and women. She was also a social and political activist and those relationships included prominent anti-war activists including Floyd Dell, editor of the radical magazine The Masses, and perhaps John Reed. She became a prominent feminist of her time; her poetry and her example, both subversive, inspired a generation of American women. Her career as a poet was meteoric. In 1923 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer prize in poetry. She became a performance artist super-star, reading her poetry to rapt audiences across the country. A road accident in middle-age left her a partial invalid and morphine-dependent for years. Yet near the end of her life, she wrote some of her greatest poetry.