FLETCHER MSS.
The Fletcher mss., ca. 1965, consist of papers assembled by Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, 1905–1969, toward a study of suspect (i.e. forged) printed playbills, mainly featuring David Garrick's performances. Fletcher was a theatrical bookseller, historian and editor of Theater Notebook. In the mid–1950's Kyrle Fletcher and George Nash, curator of the Gabrielle Enthoven Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, began to work on certain 18th century playbills which were suspected of having been forged. In 1965, they canvassed three major playbill–holding libraries in the US—Harvard, the Folger and the Huntington—for additional expertise in determining what is original, what is genuine, and what method of reproduction was used in the creation of the forged materials. The Fletcher/Nash study was apparently designed for publication in the Theater Notebook, however it seems never to have been completed.
Included is correspondence, photostats or Xeroxes of playbills, and Fletcher's personal collection of 43 forged or deceptively facsimiled playbills.
Acquired: 2009
Collection size: 50 items
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