Tag Archives: Accessing collections

Excellent exhibitions!

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I’m pleased to announce that the much-anticipated exhibitions by the students of ‘British theatre 1860-1940′ went off brilliantly, an much fun was had all round. Not only did all eighteen students produce really good work, but they also introduced their exhibitions to all of our guests, chatted about what they had discovered and even played a part expertly pouring drinks for the opening!

All of the feedback which I have had from guests and visitors has been overwhelmingly positive, with everyone hoping to repeat the success in the next semester…so there’s no pressure for next semester’s module group!

More on the exhibitions will follow, including a new section of the Special Collections website, where we hope to include details of each exhibition that takes place in the reading room, and link to students’ exhibition websites.

In the meantime, please come and visit the reading room to see the excellent work. We will be reopening from 4th January 2011, at the usual times of 9.30-1 and 2-4.30, Monday to Friday. The exhibition will remain up until 14th January.

And if you’d like to whet your appetite, or see more on the exhibitions, please have a look at the websites:

Theatre and Class Identity

The Popularity of Music Hall

Women in Victorian Theatre

Any comments would be gratefully received!

Exhibitions looming

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The final preparations are now under way for the British Theatre 1860-1940 Exhibition, which will open to the public on Wednesday 15th December.

The reading room and office have been tidied up, cleaning is underway and three sets of empty boards are looming over three remarkably clear tables. We have six sheets of (almost) identically cut cotton waiting to throw over each group’s work (in the interest of fairness), which will be covered until the grand unveiling. Cushions, books rests, snake weights and Secol covers are neatly stacked, awaiting the formation of three different exhibits created by the eighteen students of the British Theatre module.

The exhbits will be titled

  • The changing representation of women 1860-1910
  • The reasons for the popularity of Music Hall
  • The ways in which theatre troubled class relations

Each group of six students has gone through a process of exploring the sources available in Special Collections, researching topics which interest them and selecting sources to support the arguments they make in the course of their exhibit.

While staff have been on hand to offer advice on the use of collections and on the topics, the work is the students’ own and will draw on their theatrical experiences to inform current academic debates. We are looking forward to experiencing the work which these talented students produce and hope that you will be able to share in it.

If you can’t get to the exhibition, opening times below, each group will produce a website to support their exhibit, which will include digital images of the sources they used. We hope, in the near future, to be able to link these websites to the Special Collections website in order to make this work accessible to everyone.

Exhibition Opening Times

Opens: Wednesday 15th December

Daily opening: 9.30-1pm & 2-4.30pm Monday-Friday (normal reading room opening times)

Closures: 12-3pm Tuesday 21st December
23 December-3rd January (Library closure for vacation)

Closes: 7th January

If in doubt, please phone ahead of your visit on 01227 827609

Dastardly bankers and financial panics

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Despising bankers and panic over financial crises are no new phenomenons: Dion Boucicault’s The Poor of New York (later renamed The Streets of London), written in collaboration with three journalists, was a popular success in 1857. Focusing on two periods financial panic, 1837 and 1857, the plot is set in motion by the actions of the villain Bloodgood, a banker, who absconds with his bank’s cash just before it goes bankrupt. One of the latest investors, Captain Fairweather, leaves an impoverished family who are driven further into penury as a result of Bloodgood, who, as a wealthy landlord, demands high rents from the Fairweather family and their friends.

Boucicault himself suffered from poor finances for most of his life, but as a result of overspending, rather than extortion. He was involved in several cases regarding plagiarism; The Poor of New York was closely based on Les Pauvres de Paris by Edouard-Louis-Alexandre Brisbarre and Eugene Nus. Ironically, Boucicault’s version was written in response to his desperate need for money after the birth of Eve, Dion and Agnes Boucicault’s second child.

Streets of London Quadrille

Streets of London sheet music title page

Although initially written for and performed in America, the play was a hit elsewhere, with the name of the production changing to suit the place of its performance. The Poor of Liverpool, for example, was performed in 1864 and versions of The Streets of Dublin performed as recently as 1995. Despite the critics’ derision and Boucicault’s own admission that the play was ‘guano’, the enduring popularity of the play suggests that the trials of financial panics and the actions of bankers have long been a subject to draw the crowds.

For more information on this or any of Boucicault’s plays, have a look at the Special Collections website, where there are lists of characters, plot summaries and lists of productions of some of Boucicault’s better known productions. Archives Hub now also includes full descriptions of the two Boucicault Collections.

If you would like to view any items from the collection, please email specialcollections@kent.ac.uk to make an appointment.

With many thanks to Angela Groth-Seary for the excellent website, and to Mrs Sue Crabtree, for her research.

The Red Dean – another milestone

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The pamphlets from the Hewlett Johnson Collection have now been fully catalogued. The items can be searched via the main library catalogue.

Hewlett Johnson was Dean of Canterbury from 1931 to 1963 and became infamous for his outspoken support of socialism. His life (1874-1966) saw turbulent times, experiencing the end of the Victorian era, two world wars and the heightening of tensions in the Cold War. Controversy dogged his public and private life, but unlike many of his contemporaries, Johnson never became disilussioned with Communism as the twentieth century progressed. Dean of Manchester, then Canterbury, he worked for social change in Britain as well as writing books and pamphlets to support the cause of a global socialism. He saw his deeply held Christian beliefs as complimentary to the Communist cause, rather than at odds with it. With critics and supporters in equal numbers, Johnson saw Canterbury through the Second World War, although his wife, Nowell, and children were evacuated to Harlech in North Wales.

Fidel Castro talking to Hewlett Johnson

Fidel Castro talking to Hewlett Johnson

During his lifetime, Hewlett Johnson became a global star for Communism, travelling to Russia and China several times and publishing books and articles about his journeys. The material for his later visits was largely drawn from his wife’s diaries. At the age of 90, he visited Cuba for the first time: one spur-of-the-moment photograph in the collection shows Johnson talking to Fidel Castro. In 1951, Johnson became the second person to be awarded the Stalin Peace Prize and, despite the hostility from the Canterbury Cathedral Chapter, continued to advocate socialism throughout his tenure.

Some of the pamphlets were written by Johnson, for example I Appeal, which Nowell illustrated, about germ warfare allegedly carried out on China by America during the Second World War. There is also an obituary for Joseph Stalin, in the form of a memorial address to the British Soviet Friendship Society in 1953. Other topics related to socialism include social credit and the distribution of food during the Second World War. There are numerous pamphlets from and about Johnson’s tours to Communist countries. It is also clear that Johnson’s unsuccessful attempts to become a missionary did not stop his interest in the global development of Christianity; there is a pamphlet about Ugandan Christians, a copy of a sermon in support of the observance of the Sabbath, a short article on Christian fellowship and an exhaustive pamphlet supporting the theory of divinecreation, rather than evolution.

While these pamphlets are only a small part of the Hewlett Johnson Collection, they do display the wide variety of interests and influences of the extraordinary man who became known as the Red Dean of Canterbury.

For more information about Hewlett Johnson, and the collection, please visit the Special Collections Website.

Coming up next, the continuing cataloguing of the Bigwood wartime cinema and theatre programmes, and more entries on Archives Hub. Watch this space!

Boucic-who?

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It’s funny how quickly things get forgotten by fashion. As I’ve been told, the reaction to any mention of Dion Boucicault today is likely to be “Boucic-who?”. But at the end of the nineteenth century, Dionysius Lardner Boucicault was an international star, bad at managing his money, his personal life attracting audiences as much as his plays. Only recently have his plays begun to come back into vogue; a recent production of London Assurance at the National Theatre was broadcast live around the UK and in the US.

While editing entries for Archives Hub, part of an effort to get Special Collections ‘out there’, I’ve been lucky to have a lot of biographical material to work with, particularly for the two Boucicault Collections. (We generally refer to them as one collection, but technically, they’re the Fawkes Boucicault Collection and Calthrop Boucicault Collection). Editing down a three-thousand word essay to something more manageable hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learnt a lot of fascinating things along the way.

When I started in Special Collections, I admit that my reaction was “Boucic-who?” as well. Other, better informed, people tried to explain the importance of the Irish-born playwright, but it’s only really by looking at the items in the collection(s) that I’ve been able to get a real idea of Boucicault’s importance. It seems as if he kept lawyers in business, with the amount of litigation he became embroiled in, yet he was influential in establishing the copyright and royalty systems in the US and UK. His personal life was the subject of some controversy; he claimed never to have been married to his second wife, Agnes, while having an affair with an actress called Katherine Rogers, then married a 21-year-old member of his company when he was 65 and still married to Agnes.

But beyond the scandals of the celebrity lifestyle, some of Boucicault’s melodramas, both original and ‘adapted’ (or plagiarised) were hugely popular; Queen Victoria noted some of the performances she attended in her diaries. Boucicault managed, directed and wrote for the stage, displaying a mixture of talents unusual for his time. While he experienced many failures and frequently squandered his earnings, his successes were hugely successful and he often pushed at the boundaries of professional expectation. Added to this, he is also, bizarrely, credited with inventing fireproofing for scenery, to create increasingly lavish (melo)dramatic productions. This elaborate staging was one of his difficulties; a production of Babil and Bijou, for example, made losses despite a hugely popular six month run.

So far, I have only created entries for the Fawkes Boucicault collection, the smaller of the two. Next, I’m moving on to the entries for the Calthrop Boucicault collection which, I have to admit, I prefer because it contains more original material, including images of many productions. When they’re both complete, they will be sent to the Archives Hub team to be put onto their database. Hopefully the University of Kent’s entries will start going live early next week; I hope that putting these collections out in the public eye will encourage the renaissance that Boucicault’s work recently seems to have enjoyed.

There are currently some items on display in the Reading Room from the Bouciault and Melville Collections which relate to The Flying Scud.

If you’re interested in Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, why not take a look at some of the University’s other Theatre Collections?

Another major and complimentary Boucicault Collection is held at the University of South Florida, Tampa.