'The second volume in the Coward Collection. The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and versatility Coward''s writing achieved in the late 1920s- it contains his best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immediate hit when it was first staged in 1930, Coward''s sparkling dialogue and repartee have ensured the play''s popularity ever since. Set in France in the late 1920s, the plot centres around divorcees Amanda and Elyot who are honeymooning in the same hotel with their new spouses. Their chance meeting reminds them of why they fell in love, but also why they couldn''t live together. It was recently revived at the National Theatre starring Juliet Stevenson and Anton Lesser. It was said to be the funniest play to have adorned the English theatre in this century. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929, Coward wrote that it was ''a musical that gave me more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Not especially on account of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or its production but as a whole''. The Marquise is an eighteenth century comedy filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is a vilification of war that contains some of Coward''s most powerful writing. ''He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history'' Terence Rattigan'