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COLLECTION Identifier: MS Thr 182-182.1

John Lawrence Toole autograph collection

Overview

Autograph album and correspondence of English actor and theatrical manager John Lawrence Toole.

Dates

  • Creation: 1750-1903 and undated

Language of Materials

Collection materials are in English.

Conditions Governing Access

There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.

Extent

.33 linear feet (2 volumes)

An autograph collection possibly compiled by Toole containing letters and portraits of eighteenth and nineteenth-century English actors and playwrights. Includes engravings of Guiseppe De Begnis, John Fawcett, Charles Mathews, Benjamin Wrench as Benedick in Much ado about nothing, watercolor of [John] Liston as Paul Pry by J. Clayton Clarke, and a signed photograph of Toole, among other portraits. Also includes letters to Toole from Henry William George Paget Anglesey, Charles James Mathews, Benjamin Webster, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, John Baldwin Buckstone, Shirley Brooks, Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan, Lawrence Barrett, James Robertson Planché, and William Ewart Gladstone, among others. Also includes letters by Charles Dickens, among other correspondence.

The autograph album lacks pp. 36, 187, 188; there is no page numbered 175.

Biographical / Historical

Toole was an English actor and theatrical manager.

Arrangement

Organized into the following series:

  1. I. fMS Thr 182: Autograph album and letters
  2. ___A. Autograph album
  3. ___B. Letters to John Lawrence Toole
  4. II. fMS Thr 182.1: Correspondence

Immediate Source of Acquisition

*66M-62-*66M-62.1. Purchased with the F.E. Chase fund from Emily Driscoll, 115 East 40th Street, New York, New York 10016; received: 1966 November 30.

Title
Toole, John Lawrence, 1830-1906, collector. John Lawrence Toole autograph collection: Guide.
Author
Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
Language of description
und
EAD ID
hou00710

Repository Details

Part of the Houghton Library Repository

Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.

Contact:
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440