The eighth volume of the Czech Theatre (series Essays, Criticism, Analysis) contains a selection of texts by Josef Kodíček (1892-1954), one of the most influential critical spokesmen of the Čapek generation, theatre and art critic, translator, dramaturge, theatre and film director. The book contains texts on theatre published by Josef Kodíček between 1910 and 1937. From the period before the First World War, the anthology includes his early essays, which he published while still a grammar school student in the Czech-Jewish magazine Rozvoj, later in Přehlíd and in the magazine Scena, which he co-founded and to which he contributed extensively. The main contribution is represented by texts from the interwar period, when he printed mainly on the pages of the daily Tribuna, but also in Peroutka's Přítomnost and Český slovo. The volume also includes Kodíček's essays from the three volumes of the New Czech Theatre (1926-1929), which Kodíček co-edited with M. Rutt. In addition to the theatre criticism that forms the core of the collection, this selection is expanded to include contributions that go beyond the genre of theatre criticism, including texts dealing with issues such as recitation, film and adaptation, and from a different perspective, the anthology also includes texts that could be characterised as a medallion, a memoir or a review study. The collection is supplemented by an accompanying unpublished study by O. Rádl, an annotated bibliography and an inventory of works. As a documentary appendix, the volume is accompanied by a CD with a recording of a memorial service for Josef Kodíček broadcast on the Svobodná Evropa station and a recording of a production of the radio play G. B. Shaw's Rural Courtship, in which Kodíček also appears.
