It was 1937 when Joseph Donohue first met Frank Milisits in grammar school. As they grew up together on the Upper East Side of New York City, the two boys kept scrapbooks on World War II, became junior aid-raid wardens, and attended block parties for returning veterans. But little did Joseph and Frank know that their fascination with war would eventually lead them one day to fight in a hostile climate thousands of miles away.

In his Korean War memoir, Joseph Donohue chronicles the captivating story of how two naive twenty-year-old kids made a full-circle journey from draftees to basic training recruits to airborne troopers who somehow summoned the courage to jump out of the first planet they ever set foot in. As the young men arrived in Korea during a time of uncertainty and chaos, Donohue details how the two men quickly moved from days of complete boredom to hair-raising moments as the crawled in the rat-infested trenches, dodged booby traps and minefields, and risked their lives to keep hordes of enemy soldiers at bay. One year later, they returned home as combat veterans who has somehow survived terrifying battles and a one-in-nine chance of becoming a war casualty.

" Frank and Me at Mundung-ni" provided an eye-opening glimpse into the realities of "The Forgotten War" and the compelling personal memories of two childhood pals who shared an impassioned journey to a war neither would ever forget.

This is the first collection of plays in the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde series edited by Ian Small. It contains full-dress critical editions, at the high editorial standard of the familiar Oxford English Texts series, encompassing all surviving manuscript material and all other relevant documents, of three of Wilde's plays: The Duchess of Padua, the original French Salome, and the first English translation, by Lord Alfred Douglas. The edition contains comprehensive introductions and editorial introductions, as well as extensive annotations. The Duchess of Padua is one of two early plays by Wilde (the other being Vera; or, The Nihilists) that signify his youthful interest in making his mark on the contemporary theatre. They are imperfect works, but they show the real talent and definite promise that would be fulfilled, in the early 1890s, first with Lady Windermere's Fan (completed 1891, produced 1892) and then, almost simultaneously, with the next play in this volume, Wilde's French Salome, written also in 1891, completed in 1892, but not published until 1893: his only work written in French. Douglas's translation, which left the author of the French work disappointed by its 'schoolboy' quality, is also included here since it was issued over Wilde's name (and dedicated to Douglas, 'the translator of my play') and is indisputably part of Wilde's oeuvre.

Volume Two of The Cambridge History of British Theatre begins in 1660 with the restoration of King Charles II to the throne and the reestablishment of the professional theatre, interdicted since 1642, and follows the far-reaching development of the form over two centuries and more to 1895. Descriptions of the theatres, actors and actresses, acting companies, dramatists and dramatic genres over the period are augmented by accounts of the audiences, politics and morality, scenography, provincial theatre, theatrical legislation, the long-drawn-out competition of major and minor theatres, and the ultimate revocation of the theatrical monopoly of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, initiating a new era. Chapters on two representative years, 1776 and 1895, are complemented by chapters on two phenomenal productions, The Beggar's Opera and The Bells, as well as by studies of popular theatre, including music hall, sexuality on the Victorian stage and other social and cultural contexts.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of British Theatre begins in 1660 with the restoration of King Charles II to the throne and the reestablishment of the professional theatre, interdicted since 1642, and follows the far-reaching development of the form over two centuries and more to 1895. Descriptions of the theatres, actors and actresses, acting companies, dramatists and dramatic genres over the period are augmented by accounts of the audiences, politics and morality, scenography, provincial theatre, theatrical legislation, the long-drawn-out competition of major and minor theatres, and the ultimate revocation of the theatrical monopoly of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, initiating a new era. Chapters on two representative years, 1776 and 1895, are complemented by chapters on two phenomenal productions, The Beggar's Opera and The Bells, as well as by studies of popular theatre, including music hall, sexuality on the Victorian stage and other social and cultural contexts.

Unique among his works, Oscar Wilde's play "Salome" (1893) was written originally in French. Joseph Donohue's new translation of the horrific New Testament story has recast Wilde's shockingly radical drama in the natural idiomatic language of our own day. Presenting a colloquial and spare American English version of Wilde's consciously stylized French, Donohue's approach gives full value to the Irish author's dark ruminations on evil and perversity in a world on the brink of a new, unsettling Christian dispensation.

The play was first translated into English in 1894 by Wilde's young friend Lord Alfred Douglas, but Wilde was far from pleased with the outcome. And yet Douglas's stilted, inaccurate version has somehow retained a long-standing place on the stage and in the study. Donohue's lucid vernacular transformation of Douglas's safe, thee-and-thou faux-biblical language has the quality of a startling modern-dress remounting of an overly familiar classic play. This new "Salome" is calculated to bring both readers and playgoers into close, disturbing confrontation with one of the most erotic and bloodiest sequences of testamentary lore.

Brilliantly complementing Donohue's unprecedented approach is a set of engravings by a master illustrator of our time. Barry Moser is an artist who speaks the blunt yet fluent language of present-day communication through the penetrating gestural vocabulary of the graphic arts. The resulting combination of words and images directly engages with Wilde's characters and their story, setting a bold new standard for the melding of literary and pictorial excellence. At the same time, it leads readers and audiences alike to rediscover perennially significant themes--of love, death, power, and individuality.

A signed and numbered limited edition is available for $100.00.

It was 1937 when Joseph Donohue first met Frank Milisits in grammar school. As they grew up together on the Upper East Side of New York City, the two boys kept scrapbooks on World War II, became junior aid-raid wardens, and attended block parties for returning veterans. But little did Joseph and Frank know that their fascination with war would eventually lead them one day to fight in a hostile climate thousands of miles away.

In his Korean War memoir, Joseph Donohue chronicles the captivating story of how two naive twenty-year-old kids made a full-circle journey from draftees to basic training recruits to airborne troopers who somehow summoned the courage to jump out of the first planet they ever set foot in. As the young men arrived in Korea during a time of uncertainty and chaos, Donohue details how the two men quickly moved from days of complete boredom to hair-raising moments as the crawled in the rat-infested trenches, dodged booby traps and minefields, and risked their lives to keep hordes of enemy soldiers at bay. One year later, they returned home as combat veterans who has somehow survived terrifying battles and a one-in-nine chance of becoming a war casualty.

" Frank and Me at Mundung-ni" provided an eye-opening glimpse into the realities of "The Forgotten War" and the compelling personal memories of two childhood pals who shared an impassioned journey to a war neither would ever forget.

This two-volume addition to the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde contains full critical editions of two plays, Lady Lancing and The Importance of Being Earnest. These authoritative editions are based on all surviving manuscript material and other relevant documents. Composed rapidly between August and October of 1894 as a generically unorthodox four-act 'Serious Comedy for Trivial People', Lady Lancing was never produced or published in Wilde's lifetime. Unexpectedly, it was taken over by the actor-manager George Alexander, transformed over the author's objections into a three-act farcical comedy, and produced as The Importance of Being Earnest at Alexander's St James's Theatre, London, in February 1895. Published only in 1899, in an edition extensively revised by the author, it has never subsequently been out of print. Lady Lancing, meanwhile, has come to latter-day critical and scholarly attention as the first fruits of Wilde's brilliant concept of a new kind of farcical dramatization. Also included in this publication is a reconstructed edition of a dramatic fragment by Wilde, A Wife's Tragedy, based on a single, undated surviving manuscript. In addition to annotated critical editions of the two plays themselves, accompanied by extensive commentaries, these two volumes contain several historical and critical accounts of the long, complex early history of these two separate but closely related compositions. These accounts trace the gestation of Lady Lancing and its transformation into The Importance of Being Earnest and describe the abrupt closing of the first production of The Importance as a consequence of Wilde's ill-fated lawsuit against the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel in April 1895 and the two subsequent trials of Wilde himself for 'gross indecency', ending in his conviction and incarceration. These accounts are augmented by descriptions of the fascinating textual history of the two plays and are supplemented by appendices that provide additional information about Lady Lancing and The Importance of Being Earnest, including a survey of first production reviews, an acting script of In the Season (the curtain-raiser included in first-production performances), a tabular comparison of the texts , and a summary of the process by which the play became a perennial, international theatrical classic.