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Letters, diaries, albums, photographs, and printed material.

The 44 letters related to British theater in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, dating from 1773 to 1853. The collection is divided into five series: I. Letters to William Kenneth (8); II. Letters to or about Richard Brinsley Sheridan (3); III. Letters to James Winston (5); IV. Theatrical letters arranged alphabetically by sender (26); and V. Non-theatrica l letters (2). The two letters in the 5th series are a letter from a solicitor to Lady Emma Hamilton dated 1806 and a letter from Irish poet Thomas Moore dated 1832. Most of the theatrical letters deal with the engagement of players and theater personnel.

Correspondence; biographical forms; typescript biographical entries, often corrected and amended by the subjects; documents; proofs; memoranda; notecards; photographs; clippings of reviews; and other printed materials for the project with the working title "Who's Who in the American Theatre." The materials were assembled by Walter Rigdon, editor, and James H. Heineman, publisher, from 1963, when the first biographical forms were sent out, until 1969, when plans for a second edition were abandoned. The 1101 page volume which was published under the title "The Biographical Encyclopaedia & Who's Who of the American Theater" includes 3350 biographical entries for theater people and a necrology of 9000 names, playbills from 1959-1964, histories of theater buildings and theater groups, production records of Plays staged in New York since 1900, a theater bibliography of 600 entries, lists of awards, and lists of foreign productions. Among those for whom original materials were included are Truman Capote, John Dos Passos, Richard Eberhart, T.S. Eliot, Arthur Miller, Elmer RIce, and Virgil Thomson.