This is the second of a six-volume collection presenting all sixteen of Ibsen's major plays written in the thirty-four years from 1865 to 1899. Each volume offers a cross-section of these plays so as to illustrate the different phases of his dramatic genius.This volume contains Ibsen's two most famous plays about women: A Doll's House (1879), his first international success, which "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life," and Hedda Gabler (1890), now one of his most popular plays, but greeted at first with bewilderment and outrage. Between them came An Enemy of the People, written rapidly in 1882, largely in response to the hostile reception of Ghosts the year before.Michael Meyer's translations have won praise for their accuracy and liveliness on both stage and page. They have been performed extensively in the theatre and on radio and television. 'Where previous translators have adopted either a stiffly Victorian style, or one so modern as to destroy the illusion that we were seeing a period play, Mr Meyer has found a form of speech common both to the period in which the plays were written and to the present.' (The Times.) 'Meyer's translations of Ibsen are a major fact in one's general sense of post-war drama. Their vital pace, their unforced insistence on the poetic centre of Ibsen's genius, have beaten academic versions from the field.' (George Steiner, The New Statesman.)Michael Meyer is also Ibsen's biographer and a leading authority on his work. This edition includes Meyer's illuminating introductions to each play, as well as a chronology of Ibsen's life and writings.

Publication Year: 1987