This Volume initiates the paperback publication of the collected works of Harold Pinter, regarded by many as the foremost playwright in the English language, It contains his first five plays, spanning the years 1957-1960, beginning with The Birthday Party, which was first staged in London in 1958. Here, menace, fear and cold, and intangible terror explode with sudden elemental fury in a distinctive style which was to dominate the early work of Pinter. Also in the volume are The Room, first produced in 1960, in which a blind Black man arrives to deliver a mysterious message; plus The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, and A Night Out as well as two short stories written before Pinter turned to the theatre, The Black and White and The Examination. Pinter's speech Writing for the Theatre introduces the collection. Harold Pinter, whose classics for the contemporary stage are receiving performances all over the world, remains in the words of Newsweek's Jack Kroll, "the most fascinating, enigmatic and accomplished dramatist in the English Language."