Call Number:

Ms. Codex 1747

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

0.6 linear feet (5 volumes)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Colonel T. Allston Brown history of the American stage notebooks, circa 1905, Ms. Codex 1747, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

circa 1905 (inclusive)

Creator:

Brown, T. Allston (Thomas Allston)

Form:

Clippings (information artifacts) and Notes

Abstract:

T. Allston Brown, was a theater critic, newspaper editor, talent agent and theater historian who lived from 1836 to 1918. Brown spent the majority of his adult life in Philadelphia, PA and published extensively on the history of American theater. The collection includes five bound volumes containing handwritten notes and newspaper clippings concerning the history of the American stage from 1749 to 1905. The volumes are organized by geographic location. The first three volumes are respectively focused on Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City. The fourth volume includes information on Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, greater Pennsylvania, New Jersey, greater New York, and Rhode Island. The fifth volume includes information on Brooklyn.

Colonel T. Allston Brown was a theater critic, newspaper editor, talent agent and theater historian who lived from 1836 to 1918. He spent the majority of his adult life in Philadelphia, PA. He published extensively on the history of theater including his exhaustive series of the History of the American Stage, published in 1870 and A History of the New York Stage from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901, published in 1902.

Brown was never in the military but was informally given the title "Colonel" when he was working as manager and treasurer at Gardner & Madigan's circus and filled in for one of the tightrope walkers who went missing immediately before the show. It is possible that Brown was a member of the Green Room Club, a New York fraternal organization founded in December 20, 1902 for men involved in dramatic arts, to which he gifted the volumes in this collection.

This collection includes five bound volumes containing handwritten notes and newspaper clippings concerning the history of the American stage. The volumes are organized by geographic location, the first is focused on Boston, the second on Philadelphia, the third on New York City, the fourth on Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, greater Pennsylvania, New Jersey, greater New York, and Rhode Island, and the fifth and final volume is focused on Brooklyn. These volumes contain information on actors, theatres, theatre companies, circuses, and a variety of shows from 1749 all the way to 1905, just one year before Colonel T. Allston Brown presented the volumes to the Green Room Club. In addition to documenting the theater, the notebooks also contain information on everything from circuses to early African-American theater to a burlesque Ethiopian opera.

It is possible that Brown collected these newspaper clippings while researching his works on the New York and American stage.