The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding.

Six Characters in Search of an Author is Pirandello's play about the nature of theatre and the problems of theatricality. Six characters, whose author has abandoned them mid-process, turn up at a rehearsal and demand to be played by the actors present in order to resolve their tragedy and become 'real'.

Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1867 - 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet and short story writer. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage".

Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd. His major plays include Six Characters in search of an Author and Henry IV.