Photograph by Fatimah Namdar
The Pinter archive is now open. Kate O'Brien's posts describing the cataloguing have now been archived but Zoë Wilcox and colleagues will continue to blog on the Peggy Ramsay Archive, as well as the Library's other pre-eminent theatre collections.
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The Peggy Ramsay Archive - or rather, the archive of Margaret Ramsay Ltd, play agent – is a unique record of the workings of a post-war theatrical literary agency. Acquired by the British Library in 1997, Peggy Ramsay’s archive gives us an insight into the careers of over 200 of her clients. There are many famous names among the list including David Hare, Joe Orton, Eugene Ionesco, Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill and Howard Brenton to name just a few. The records of the agency shed fresh light on the working lives of the playwrights, directors, designers and novelists among the client list. Not only that, they also give us a sense of the formidable force that was Peggy Ramsay.
From 1954 to 1991 Peggy Ramsay was a highly influential figure in the theatrical world. Priding herself on being able to judge a play from a first reading of the text, Peggy had a knack of spotting young talent. She intervened in her clients’ personal and professional lives, striving always to keep her writers focussed on the development of their talent and away from the ‘dangers’ of commercial success. She herself admitted that 'most people breathe a sigh of relief after a couple of hours in my company’.
Client files and correspondence make up the bulk of the archive. Among the administrative papers there are also records of unsolicited scripts received by the agency, gifts from writers, accounts ledgers, scrapbooks and a small collection of photographs. Some of the themes running through the archive include: censorship and attitudes to the depiction of homosexuality onstage; the debate over the presentation of British playwrights’ work in South Africa during Apartheid; and the increasing dominance of directors and star actors in contrast to the declining influence of playwrights and commercial theatre managers.
Over the next year I will be cataloguing the archive and sharing my discoveries on this blog and via my new Twitter feed. I hope to give you a sense of the breadth of this archive and the complicated process of arranging and listing the papers. The archive of Margaret Ramsay Ltd will be available for research at the British Library from autumn 2010.
