Manuscripts Department
           Library of the University of North Carolina
                         at Chapel Hill

                GENERAL AND LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS

                            #11032-z
                     LAURENCE HOUSMAN PAPERS
                            Inventory

Abstract:      Correspondence and a few miscellaneous items of
           Laurence Housman (1865-1959), author, playwright, and
           brother of poet A. E. Housman.  Almost all items are
           letters from Laurence Housman to Olive Hooper Leith,
           an actress, concerning productions of his plays,
           political opinions, Housman's involvement in the
           English peace movement in the 1930s and 1940s, and
           personal matters.

Online Catalog Terms:
   Authors and the theater--England.
   Dramatists, English--Political and social views.
   English drama--20th century.
   Housman, Laurence, 1865-1959.
   Leith, Olive Hooper.
   Peace movements--England--History--20th century.
   Theater--England--Production and direction.

Size:  About 182 items (5 folders).

Provenance:    Purchased from the Rendells Inc. of Newton, Mass.,
               in April 1982.

Access:        No restrictions.

Processing Note:   This collection was processed with support
                   from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.  

Copyright:     Retained by the authors of items in these papers,
               or their descendants, as stipulated by United
               States copyright law.

Table of Contents:
       Biographical Note
       Description

                        BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

   Laurence Housman, born in Bromsgrove, England, in 1865, was an
older brother of the poet A. E. Housman.  He grew up and attended
school in the Bromsgrove area before moving in with his sister,
Clemence, in Kensington, London, in 1885.  They both attended art
school to become illustrators.  Housman's first job was writing
reviews for the Manchester Guardian.  In the early 1900s, he was
involved in the women's suffrage movement and later became a
pacifist.  After World War I, Housman moved to Street,
Somersetshire, with his sister and lived there the rest of his
life.  He died on 20 February 1959.

   Housman was best known as a playwright and satirical novelist.

His major works include An Englishwoman's Loveletters (1899),
Bethlehem (c. 1901), The Chinese Lantern (1908), Little Plays of
St. Francis (1926), Victoria Regina (1935), The Unexpected Years
(1936), His Royal Highness, The Duke of Flamborough (1938),
Backwords and Forwords (1945), and The Kind and the Foolish
(1952).  

[For additional information, see "Laurence Housman" in Obituaries
from the Times, 1951-1960 (1979), pp. 358-359.]

                           DESCRIPTION

   With two exceptions, these letters and postcards are from
Laurence Housman to Olive Hooper, who married Colin Leith in
1940.  In the 1920s, Olive played the part of Sister Claire in
Housman's Little Plays of St. Francis.  She and Housman became
friends in those years and began a correspondence that continued
until Housman's last years.

   Letters from the 1920s and early 1930s relate chiefly to
casting, touring, and other aspects of production of Housman's
plays.  About 1934, the letters became more personal, with
Housman discussing his life outside the theater and his literary
and other opinions.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Housman's
involvement in the peace movement in England is a major theme.

   After her marriage in 1940, Olive moved to Australia.  There
are fewer letters in the war years during which Housman's
pacifism remained a major topic.  Housman's literary opinions and
the production of his works, theatrical and non-theatrical,
continued to be discussed in the 1940s and 1950s.  In 1951,
Housman's joining of the Society of Friends is a concern in his
letters.

   Housman lived with his sister Clemence throughout the period
covered by these letters.  As she grew increasingly feeble and
eventually died, and as he himself experienced a failing memory
and other infirmities, the inevitability of death became a common
focus in the letters.  Housman nevertheless continued to discuss
his activities on several fronts through the last years of this
correspondence.

   The two letters not from Housman are from Littleton C. Powys
to Olive, dated 28 July 1955, and from Clemence Housman to Olive,
c. 1949.

   Other material includes playbills, articles by and about
Housman, reviews of his works, a radio script by Housman about
Macbeth, a poem called "A Dedicat" in Housman's hand and
apparently composed by him, enclosures from letters that have
been annotated, and other items.