Editing Tom Stoppard (section)

=== Early work ===
Stoppard wrote short radio plays in 1953–54 and by 1960 he had completed his first stage play, ''A Walk on the Water'', which was later re-titled ''Enter a Free Man'' (1968).<ref Name="BBC"/>
He has said the work owed much to [[Robert Bolt]]'s ''[[Flowering Cherry]]'' and [[Arthur Miller]]'s ''[[Death of a Salesman]]''. Within a week after sending ''A Walk on the Water'' to an agent, Stoppard received his version of the "Hollywood-style telegrams that change struggling young artists' lives." His first play was optioned, staged in [[Hamburg]], then broadcast on British Independent Television in 1963.<ref name=sal/> From September 1962 until April 1963, Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic for ''Scene'' magazine, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and the pseudonym [[William Boot]] (taken from [[Evelyn Waugh]]'s ''Scoop''). In 1964, a [[Ford Foundation]] grant enabled Stoppard to spend 5 months writing in a Berlin mansion, emerging with a one-act play titled ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear'', which later evolved into his Tony-winning play ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]''.<ref name=sal/>

In the following years, Stoppard produced several works for radio, television and the theatre, including ''"M" is for Moon Among Other Things'' (1964), ''A Separate Peace'' (1966) and ''If You're Glad I'll Be Frank'' (1966). On 11 April 1967&nbsp;– following acclaim at the 1966 [[Edinburgh Festival]]&nbsp;– the opening of ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]'' in a [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]] production at the [[Old Vic]] made Stoppard an overnight success. ''[[Jumpers (play)|Jumpers]]'' (1972) places a professor of moral philosophy in a murder mystery thriller alongside a slew of radical gymnasts. ''[[Travesties]]'' (1974) explored the '[[Oscar Wilde|Wildean]]' possibilities arising from the fact that [[Vladimir Lenin]], [[James Joyce]], and [[Tristan Tzara]] had all been in [[Zürich]] during the First World War.<ref name="OCTP"/>
Stoppard has written one novel, ''Lord Malquist and Mr Moon'' (1966), set in contemporary London. Its cast includes the 18th-century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual [[James Boswell|Boswell]], Moon, and also cowboys, a lion (banned from [[The Ritz London Hotel|the Ritz]]) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ.