Coward, Nöel

8vo (215 x 135mm.), FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST PLAY PRODUCED IN THE WEST END, SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR ("'I feel rather promising' | Nöel Coward") on front free endpaper, original purple buckram with paper label on upper cover, browning and spotting to endpapers, spine slightly faded, minor splitting to front hinge

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I'll Leave it to You was Coward's first full-length play to be produced in the West End in July 1920. It ran for a month (after an initial try-out in Manchester) at the New Theatre (later renamed the Noël Coward Theatre) and was also Coward's first play in America. Coward, then aged 20, appeared in the role of Bobbie.

Reviewed in The Manchester Guardian on 4 May 1920, the play was described as "perhaps the neatest thing of its sort we have lately had in Manchester", but reviews in London were somewhat mixed. St. John Ervine writing in The Observer stated "Mr Coward, who played the part of the younger son, has a sense of comedy, and if he can overcome a tendency to smartness, he will probably produce a good play one of these days. Some of his lines are engagingly funny..." (The Observer, 25 July 1920). The Times, describing the piece as an "unpretentious, light-hearted, and quite delightful little play", concluded their review by noting "it is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head".