Harley Granville Barker was the most brilliant British director of the first quarter of the twentieth century. His best known plays, including Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain), were written as contributions to his Company's repertoire of provocative modern drama for a national theatre.

In The Voysey Inheritance, a young man deals with the discovery that the inheritence due to him has been mismanaged by his own parents; Waste tells the story of a young man's whose life has been thrown away; The Secret Life is a portrait of spendthrift, indolent Edwardian aristocracy; Rococo is a one-act farce set in a vicarage and Vote by Ballot shows the teething troubles of mass democracy.

This is a companion to Harley Granville Plays Two, which contains The Marrying of Ann Leete; The Madras House; His Majesty and Farewell to the Theatre.