IONESCO (EUGÈNE) Théâtre, vol. 1-2, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPIES TO THE TLS AND ALAN PRYCE-JONES, INSCRIBED on half-title of each volume ("Pour le TIMES Literary Suplement [sic], Eugene Ionesco, Paris, 7, x, 1954" and "A Monsieur A. John Price [sic], qui, le premier, a osé citer mon nom en Angleterre, ma reconnaissance très amicale, Eugene Ionesco, Paris, Oct. 1958" respectively), volume 1 a review copy with 'S[ervice de] P[resse]' at foot of title and on lower wrapper, pages browned at edges, publisher's printed wrappers, slight soiling and creasing, Gallimard, 1954-1958; Le rhinocéros. Pièce en trois actes et quatre tableaux, FIRST EDITION, printed 'Hommage de l'auteur' card loosely inserted, Gallimard, 1959, each in individual red cloth solander box, 8vo (3) INSCRIBED BY IONESCO TO ALAN PRYCE-JONES "qui, le premier, a osé citer mon nom en Angleterre". The editor of the TLS was one of the first in Britain to write about the importance of the French-Romanian playwright and the theatre of the absurd, a contribution recognised by Ionesco in the more personal inscription in the second volume, published four years after the first (third and fourth volumes appeared in the 1960s). Provenance: Alan Pryce-Jones, inscribed to him by the author in each volume of the Théâtre; by descent to the present owner.