Malcolm Morley Collection

The collection of actor-manager and stage director, Malcolm Morley (1890-1966) contains around 4,000 items devoted to all aspects of theatre, with a particular emphasis on English and American theatre and drama. The majority of the Collection is of books, but it also contains around 85 periodical titles. Monographs and periodicals in the Malcolm Morley Collection are recorded on the main catalogue; to search for play texts it is necessary to check the card catalogue on the web. To gain an overview of material from the Collection on the main catalogue, do a mixed classmark search on [M.M.C.].

An important feature of the Collection is the many hundreds of play texts and sets of plays such as Dick's Standard Plays (later Lacy's Acting Editions) and French's Acting Editions most of which were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Collection also includes theatrical biographies and memoirs, theatre histories, plays, stagecraft and general works about theatre and drama. Malcolm Morley had a particular interest in theatre history and the library reflects this with many histories of individual theatres and local studies, including Morley's final book: Margate and its Theatres, 1730-1965, published in 1966. The biographies cover a huge range of British and American actors and other theatrical personalities. The periodicals provide a vivid record of the theatre of the period, with articles, sometimes illustrated, on current productions, theatres and personalities. There are also serials which provide 'listings' of contemporary productions.

Malcolm Morley was born in London and initially moved to the United States to pursue his theatrical career. Subsequently he also worked in Canada and England. His first documented professional stage appearance was made in December 1912, in a production of Hamlet at the Garden Theatre in New York. Morley maintained an interest in theatrical research throughout his professional life, and as well as his work on London theatre history, he wrote a series of articles for the Dickensian on dramatisations of Dickens' novels made for the stage.

The collection is enhanced by archival holdings in the form of scrapbooks, typescripts and press cuttings bequeathed to the Library in 1994 by Morley's widow. This material was used by Morley in his own account of his life, which was never completed, but published in:

Morley, M. 'Fragmented Autobiography', Theatre Survey, 11 (1970), 86-98; 12 (1971), 67-78; 13 (1972), 70-80.

An obituary of Malcolm Morley is to be found in:

Nath, G.W. 'Malcolm Morley', Theatre Notebook, 20 (1966): 98-99.

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