Talk given at the 'Out of the Box and Dusted Down: Foraging and Findings'

Abstract

John Cavanagh began collecting books on theatre when he was studying at Oxford in the late 1940s and at the point of his death the library amounted to 22,000 books (at one point it had been in excess of 30,000) and a large archive of prints, drawings and photographs and play and handbills. John Cavanagh collected books that emphasised theatre as a live art so, whilst the collection does include plays, its unique value is in the breadth of subject and the diversity of subject is matched by the languages and cultures represented, with very strong European sections, material from Asia, Australasia and the Americas and rare manuscripts from the wider world. It is this strength that distinguishes the International Theatre Collection from the Theatre Museum/V&A in London and the Bristol Theatre Collection (which specialise in and continue to collect works on regional and British Theatre) thus enabling the International Theatre Collection to find a complementary position in relation to these renowned institutions and focus in relation to a multi-cultural and intercultural Britain.