The Duke of Palermo and Other Plays

Three short plays from the influential twentieth-century literary critic and author of Axel’s Castle and Patriotic Gore.

The three plays herewith by Edmund Wilson are The Lamentable Tragedy of the Duke of Palermo, Dr. McGrath, and Osbert’s Career, or The Poet’s Progress. The Duke is a comedy of American academic life; Dr. McGrath is about a modern Presbyterian minister who takes Calvinism seriously, but is eventually brought to behave like a Christian by an atheist and a Jew; and Osbert is a comic-strip fantasia. These plays are an integral part of Edmund Wilson’s literary work and will be enjoyed by the admirers of his literary chronicles, as well as by those who know his fiction.

Also included in this collection of plays is An Open Letter to Mike Nichols, which first appeared in the New York Review of Books.