The Philbrick Working Files include Norman Philbrick's correspondence with book dealers and scholarly colleagues, an appraisal of his library, accession ledgers, invoices from dealers, newspaper and magazine clippings, mailings from his numerous social and scholarly organizations, photographs, and other artifacts. Documents relating to the process by which Philbrick amassed his library on the history of theatre are predominate in this collection. This collection contains some letters and materials from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however the bulk of materials in this collection date from the mid-twentieth century.

This collection was donated in conjunction with the Geraldine Womack and Norman D. Philbrick Library of Dramatic Literature and Theatre History, which is also housed in Special Collections. Born on April 30, 1913 in Forth Wayne, Indiana, Norman Douglas Philbrick earned his A.B. from Pomona in 1935, M.A. from Stanford University in 1942, and Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1949. He married Alice Geraldine Womack in 1941, and they had four children: Mary, Anne, Robert, and Virginia.

6 boxes

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This collection is open for research.