Eight short plays: Triangle, Gladly Otherwise, The Black and White, Trouble in the Works, Cleaning Up Justice, Collector's Piece, Conference and Can You Hear Me?

Harold Pinter has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential playwrights in contemporary theatre; his arresting and original works have left a lasting imprint on the development of the stage and screen while delighting audiences around the world. This, the first of four volumes, contains his first five plays, including The Birthday Party (1958), his first full-length drama; as well as two short stories--"The Black and White" and "The Examination"--both written before Pinter turned to the theatre. Pinter's exacting and complex use of language and the features that mark his "comedies of menace" are clearly realized in these plays and stories. His speech "Writing for the Theatre" introduces the volume and establishes the context for those early years.

'An exultant night - a man in total command of his talent.' Observer 'The most intense expression of compressed violence to be found anywhere in Pinter's plays.' The Times When Teddy, a professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his old home in London, he finds his family still living in the house. In the conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of the family's struggle for supremacy.

Flora and Edward invite the match seller into their home. The match seller is silent; faced with this silence, Edward destroys himself while Flora gains strength, until finally Flora turns Edward out with the tray of matches. The midsummer's day which began with Edward having a 'slight ache' ends in his total disintegration.

'What would Harold have thought of Trump?' People are always asking me that question. (He died in 2008, eight years before Trump's election.) Now we know. As it were. - Antonia Fraser 'The foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century.' From the Swedish Academy citation on awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005 The Pres and an Officer was discovered by Antonia Fraser in autumn 2017 on one of the yellow pads Harold Pinter used for writing.

'A dark, elegiac play, studded with brutally and swaggeringly funny jokes.' Sunday Times 'A deeply poignant, raffishly comic, emotion-charged study of the gulf between parents and children and the anguish of approaching death... Beckett, the poet of terminal stages, inevitably comes to mind. What instantly moves one is Pinter's image of a man confronting death in a spirit of rage, fear and uncertainty... The piss-taking Pinter humour and the undercutting of verbal pretence are all there. But what makes this an extraordinary play is that Pinter both corrals his familiar themes - the subjectiveness of memory, the unknowability of one's lifelong partner, the gap between the certain present and the uncertain past - and extends his territory. He shows, with unflinching candour, that in an age shorn of systems and beliefs we face "death's dateless date" in a state of mortal terror.' Guardian 'Pinter has written few more fascinating plays.' The Times First staged at the Almeida Theatre, London, in September 1993, Moonlight was revived at the Donmar, London, in April 2011. 'The foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century.' Swedish Academy citation on awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005

Stanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for Stanley turns into a nightmare. The Birthday Party was first performed in 1958 and is now a modern classic, produced and studied throughout the world.

Stella returns from her dress collection in Leeds to tell James, her husband, that she has been unfaithful. James confronts Bill, pressing for the truth, already determined to believe the worst. Bill confesses that he and Stella had only talked about spending the night together. It had amused him to perpetuate Stella's story - to hurt his friend Harry. Is this the truth? Stella is silent.

Rose and Bert rent a room that might almost be a paleolithic cave; the outside is terrifying and unknown. Rose never goes out, Bert only goes to drive his van with furious aggression. A young couple call, and then a blind black man. Bert comes home, massive with triumph at smashing every car that challenged his van. Finding the stranger he kicks him to death and Rose goes blind.

Albert finds himself dominated by his mother. At an office party he is mercilessly teased by his colleagues and arrives home, his temper rising. When his mother nags he attacks and leaves her, gets picked up by a girl and is able to reduce her to humble servility. Yet, when he arrives home his mother is there fully recovered and ready to reassert her dominance.

This volume contains Harold Pinter's first six plays, including The Birthday Party. The Birthday Party Stanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by two strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for Stanley turns into a nightmare. 'Mr Pinter's terrifying blend of pathos and hatred fuses unforgettably into the stuff of art.' Sunday Times The Room and The Dumb Waiter In these two early one-act plays, Harold Pinter reveals himself as already in full control of his unique ability to make dramatic poetry of the banalities of everyday speech and the precision with which it defines character. 'Harold Pinter is the most original writer to have emerged from the "new wave" of dramatists who gave fresh life to the British theatre in the fifties and early sixties.' The Times The Hothouse The Hothouse was first produced in 1980, though Harold Pinter wrote the play in 1958, just before commencing work on The Caretaker. In this compelling study of bureaucratic power, we can see the full emergence of a great and original dramatic talent. 'The Hothouse is at once sinister and hilarious, suggesting an unholy alliance of Kafka and Feydeau.' Spectator

It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success, and its production history since it was first performed in 1960 has established the work as a landmark in twentieth-century drama. The obsessive caretaker, Davies, whose papers are in Sidcup, is a classic comic creation, and his uneasy relationship with the enigmatic Aston and Mick established the author's individuality with an international audience.

The second volume of Harold Pinter's collected work includes The Caretaker. The Caretaker It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success. The obsessive caretaker, Davies, is a classic comic creation, and his uneasy relationship with the enigmatic Aston and Mick a landmark in twentieth-century drama. 'The play remains a masterpiece.' Daily Telegraph The Collection This one-act play for television explores the sexual manoeuvres between two couples in the clothing trade. 'Taps the adrenal flow of contemporary guilt and anxiety.' Time The Lover Richard and Sarah conduct themselves with apparent respectability in the mornings, whilst living out a sequence of erotic rituals in the afternoons. 'Beautifully written... the sexiest play I remember seeing on the television.' Sunday Times The volume also includes Night School and The Dwarfs, plus five revue sketches written during the same period.

Written as a series of monologues featuring an exchange of letters between a mother and her absent son. The mother's desperate attempts to bring her son back to her from his lodgings in a sleazy London boarding house become more ill-attuned, serving only to accentuate the irreparable rift between them.

The Controller of a radio-cab firm is trying to contact Driver 274 and get him to pick up a fare at Victoria Station.

When I was fourteen I happened to meet the celebrated drama critic, Jack Kroll. We were in his New York office at Newsweek when he asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told him I'd like to write plays, if I could.

"Would you now?" He handed me a Grove Press edition of Pinter: Plays One and said, "You'd better have this then".

In 1995 my first play was put on at the National Theatre

One night, I was knocking around the lighting box just before curtain up, "Anyone in?"

The Deputy Stage Manager, said, "Harold Pinter".

"Yeah, yeah".

"No, really".

A few days later I received a little note from him, congratulating me on the play. I kept the note in my breast pocket for a month.

In May of 1999 we had lunch. Harold wore a black shirt and drank white wine. In fact, we drank a fair amount of white wine together. I'd put it about, via our mutual agent, Judy Daish, that I'd be pretty keen to direct The Caretaker and word came back that Harold would not be averse. So we discussed the play in an adult fashion, director to play-wright. I wondered when someone was going to tap me on the shoulder and wake me from this fantasy.

A month or two later I called Harold to discuss some bit of production business. He came to the phone, full of beans.

"Hallo, Harold. You sound well".

He told me that he was "well" and that he was writing a new play. He spoke like a man who had never written a play before, thrilled and delighted that the words were flowing. I was stabbing around in the dark with a new one. Harold asked after it delicately; he treated me like a fellow writer, as if all writers are equals, all prone to the same problems.

When I directed my second play, Closer, onBroadway, Jack Kroll came to interview me for Newsweek magazine. We chatted away in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel where I was staying. I told him he'd given me a book some twenty years ago and that it had been more than useful. He was delighted. He spoke at some length and with great admiration for and about Harold's work.

Jack Kroll died this summer.

It was an honour to have met him.

The book he had given me was upstairs in my hotel room.

Why would I ever part with it?

It's here on my desk, as I write.

This revised third volume of Harold Pinter's work includes The Homecoming, Old Times, No Man's Land, four shorter plays, six revue sketches and a short story. It also contains the speech given by Pinter in 1970 on being awarded the German Shakespeare Prize. The Homecoming 'Of all Harold Pinter's major plays, The Homecoming has the most powerful narrative line... You are fascinated, lured on, sucked into the vortex.' Sunday Telegraph 'The most intense expression of compressed violence to be found anywhere in Pinter's plays.' The Times Old Times 'A rare quality of high tension is evident, revealing in Old Times a beautifully controlled and expressive formality that has seldom been achieved since the plays of Racine.' Financial Times 'Harold Pinter's poetic, Proustian Old Times has the inscrutability of a mysterious picture, and the tension of a good thriller.' Independent No Man's Land 'The work of our best living playwright in its command of the language and its power to erect a coherent structure in a twilight zone of confusion and dismay.' The Times

Focusing on the brutalities of a society which forbids a minority of its population to speak in their own language, it is a play of few words which add up to an eloquent indictment of the banning of any human utterance.'

'Betrayal is a new departure and a bold one . . . Pinter has found a way of making memory active and dramatic, giving an audience the experience of the mind's accelerating momentum as it pieces together the past with a combination of curiosity and regret. He shows man betrayed not only by man, but by time - a recurring theme which has found its proper scenic correlative . . . Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with a sardonic forgiveness . . . a master craftsman honouring his talent by setting it new, difficult tasks' New Society 'There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks . . . Pinter's narrative method takes "what's next?" out of the spectator's and replaces it with the rather deeper "how?" and "why?" Why did love pass? How did these people cope with the lies, the evasions, the sudden dangers, panic and the contradictory feelings behind their own deftly engineered masks? The play's subject is not sex, not even adultery, but the politics of betrayal and the damage it inflicts on all involved.' The Times First staged at the National Theatre in 1978, Betrayal was revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 1991. Twenty years after its first showing, it returned to the National in 1998.

Deborah was a lively 16-year-old and part of a close-knit family when she fell victim to sleeping sickness. Twenty-nine years later, having been watched over throughout by the same doctor, she comes to life and gradually tries to adjust to the world around her.

Old Times was first presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, on 1 June 1971. It was revived at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in July 2004. 'Old Times is a joyous, wonderful play that people will talk about as long as we have a theatre.' New York Times 'What am I writing about? Not the weasel under the cocktail cabinet . . . I can sum up none of my plays. I can describe none of them, except to say: that is what happened. This is what they said. That is what they did.' Harold Pinter

Into his derelict household shrine Aston brings Davies, a tramp - but a tramp with pretensions, even if to the world he may be a pathetic old creature. All that is left of his past now is the existence in Sidcup of some papers, papers that will prove exactly who he is and enable him to start again. Aston, too, has his dreams: he has always been good with his hands and there is so much to do in the house. Aston's hopes are tied to his flash brother Mick's; he has aspirations to live in a luxurious apartment. Human nature is a great spoiler of plans, however ...

This volume contains a selection of early works by Harold Pinter. In the title play, everything in Flora's garden is lovely, and would be for Edward too, if it were not for the slight ache in his eyes and the mysterious matchseller at the gate. This edition also includes A Night Out, The Dwarfs and several revue sketches.

The Room, The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, A Night Out, Night School, The Collection, The Dwarfs, The Lover, Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape, Silence, Monologue, Family Voices, A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, One for the Road, Mountain Language, The New World Order, Party Time, Moonlight, Ashes to Ashes, Celebration This volume contains the complete short plays of Harold Pinter from The Room, first performed in 1960, to Celebration, which premiered in 2000. The book commemorates the tenth anniversary of the playwright's death and coincides with Pinter at the Pinter, a celebratory season staging twenty of his one-act plays at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 2018. With a foreword by Antonia Fraser. 'The foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century.' Swedish Academy citation on awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2005.