British Theater Manuscripts
Two thousand letters and other handwritten documents of 18th and 19th century British actors and theater folk can be read in the Philbrick Collection in Special Collections, Honnold Library. David Garrick, Edmund Kean, and the several members of the Kemble family and the Siddons family and their contemporaries, who had exciting personal lives as well as theatrical successes, are represented in this large cache of manuscripts.
An exceptionally interesting section of the Philbrick Collection is devoted to the English Victorian actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry and to Terry's son, Edward Gordon Craig, one of the pioneers of modern theatrical design. The Terry-Irving-Craig Collection is rich in manuscripts, letters, drawings, photographs, scrapbooks, and annotated books.
For more information about this collection, contact Carrie Marsh in Special Collections.