Finishing the Hat

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes is a memoir by American musical theatre composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

[1] The second volume, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Wafflings, Diversions and Anecdotes, was published on November 22, 2011, by Alfred A. Knopf and is 480 pages.

The first volume contains Sondheim's lyrics from his first professionally staged show, Saturday Night (1954), through West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Do I Hear a Waltz?, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, The Frogs, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and ending with Merrily We Roll Along (1981), stopping just short of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park with George (1984) which contains the song from which the title of the book is taken.

Additionally Sondheim offers sidebar critiques of some of the most renowned American lyricists of the first half of the 20th century, including Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Lorenz Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, Frank Loesser, and his own mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II.

[5] Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Wafflings, Diversions and Anecdotes received more mixed reviews compared to the first volume.