Austin Strong papers

Collection

Call Number: YCAL MSS 619

Scope and Contents

The Austin Strong Papers contain correspondence, theater scripts, artwork, notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, scrapbooks, photographs, photograph albums, printed material, and professional and personal papers. The papers primarily document Strong's professional work as a playwright, stage designer, theater producer, author, artist, and landscape architect. A small amount of material documents his work as a volunteer air raid warden in the 1940s.

Dates

1899-1951

Creator

Strong, Austin, 1881-1952

Language of Materials

In English.

Conditions Governing Access

The materials are open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

The Austin Strong Papers is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from Serendipity Books on the Adele Gutman Nathan Theatrical Collection Fund, 1996.

Arrangement

Organized into six series: I. Correspondence, 1905-1948. II. Scripts, 1903-1928. III. Artwork, 1903-1926. IV. Notebooks and Diaries, 1899-1947. V. Scrapbooks and Photographs, 1899-1951. VI. Other Papers, 1907-1946.

Extent

7 Linear Feet (15 boxes)

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.astrong

Additional Description

Overview

Austin Strong (1881-1952)

Austin Strong, American playwright, stage designer, theater producer, author, artist, and landscape architect. Strong was born in San Francisco on April 18, 1881 and grew up in Hawaii and Samoa, where he lived with his step-grandfather, Robert Louis Stevenson. Austin attended Wellington College in New Zealand from 1895 to 1898. He married and settled with his wife, Mary, in Nantucket, where he was well regarded for his preservation initiatives and yearly production of the Nantucket Follies. His plays include The Little Father of the Wilderness (1906), The Toymaker of Nuremberg (1907), The Pied Piper (1908), A Good Little Devil (1913), The Dragon's Claw (1914), Bunny (1916), Three Wise Fools (1918), Seventh Heaven (1922), Drums of Oude (1927), and A Play Without a Name (1928). Several of Strong's plays also became films. He died in Nantucket on September 17, 1952.

Processing Information

Former call numbers: Uncat Za MS 477 and Uncat Za MS 481. Vendor list is filed in Box 1.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels, depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived research value, the availability of staff, competing priorities, and whether or not further accruals are expected. The library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit.