I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Porgy and Bess
New York: Gershwin Publishing Corporation, 1935. Item #06559
A Presentation Copy to Leslie Bricusse from Ira Gershwin
With a George Gershwin Signature
As George and Ira so aptly put it, "Who could ask for anything more?"
GERSHWIN, George. The Theatre Guild Presents Porgy and Bess. Music by George Gershwin. Libretto by Dubose Heyward. Lyrics by Dubose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Settings by Sergei Soudeikine, Orchestra Conductor Alexander Smallens, Production directed by Rouben Mamoulian. New York: Gershwin Publishing Corporation, [1935].
First edition. Inscribed by Ira Gershwin: “For Leslie Bricusse—With warmest regards—Ira Gershwin.”
With an additional clipped signature of George Gershwin mounted beneath the portrait.
Large quarto (12 1/16 x 9 1/8 inches; 306 x 232 mm.). [iv], 559, [1, blank] pp.
Publisher's stiff gray wrappers, front cover lettered in black, black spine, near fine. Chemised in a maroon cloth folder, housed in a quarter brown calf slipcase, spine with five shallow raised bands, decoratively ruled and lettered in gilt in compartments.
A copy of exceptional resonance, presented by Ira Gershwin to his friend and fellow lyricist Leslie Bricusse - one of the most accomplished figures in twentieth-century popular music. Bricusse was the recipient of two Academy Awards, a Grammy, and eight Ivor Novello Awards, and was inducted into the American Songwriters’ Hall of Fame - only the fourth Englishman so honored, after Noël Coward, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney.
His work spans more than forty musical shows and films, including Stop the World - I Want to Get Off, The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd, Doctor Dolittle, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and includes such enduring songs as “What Kind of Fool Am I?”, “Feeling Good,” “Goldfinger,” and “Pure Imagination,” recorded by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to Michael Bublé. Their friendship, well documented and longstanding, places this inscription within a genuine circle of artistic exchange rather than a formal or casual presentation.
The libretto, by DuBose Heyward, is drawn from his 1925 novel Porgy and subsequent stage adaptation, preserving the rhythms and cadences of life in Charleston’s Catfish Row while shaping them into a dramatic structure of unusual cohesion for American musical theater. Heyward’s text, augmented by lyrics from both himself and Ira Gershwin,provided George Gershwin with a literary and emotional framework of rare depth, allowing the score to move fluidly between operatic form, spiritual, blues, and popular song. The result is one of the few American stage works in which music and text are so fully integrated as to justify Gershwin’s own insistence that Porgy and Bess be regarded as an opera rather than a musical.
Provenance: From the collection of Leslie Bricusse, assembled over several decades with the close guidance of David Brass, who first met Bricusse in 1968 and remained a trusted advisor and friend until his death in 2021.
This direct and personal provenance - linking creator, recipient, and the dealer who helped form the collection - gives the volume a narrative strength rarely encountered in the market.
Price: $13,500.00