Established Theatre as an Academic Subject Brander Matthews Hand Written Letter

Description: Up for auction "Established Theatre as an Academic Subject” Brander Matthews Hand Written Letter Dated 1905. ES-8765E James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 1929) was an American writer and literary critic. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University in New York and played a significant role in establishing theater as a subject worthy of formal study by academics. His interests ranged from Shakespeare, Molière, and Ibsen to French boulevard comedies, folk theater, and the new realism of his own time. Matthews born to a wealthy family in New Orleans, grew up in New York City, and graduated from Columbia College in 1871, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society and the fraternity of Delta Psi, and from Columbia Law School in 1873. He had no real interest in law and he never needed to work for a living (Matthews' father went bankrupt and the family fortune was lost, but his mother's money provided him with a comfortable living and eventually his own books sold quite well).[2] He eventually began a literary career, publishing during the 1880s and 1890s short stories, novels, plays, books about drama, biographies of actors, and three books of sketches of city life. One of these, Vignettes of Manhattan (1894), was dedicated to his friend Theodore Roosevelt, who later became President of the USA. From 1892 to 1900, he was a professor of literature at Columbia University and was thereafter professor of Dramatic Literature until his retirement in 1924. He was known as an engaging lecturer and a charismatic if demanding teacher. His influence was such that a popular pun claimed that an entire generation had been "brandered by the same Matthews". During his long tenure at Columbia University, Matthews created and curated a "dramatic museum" of costumes, scripts, props, and other stage memorabilia. Housed originally in a four-room complex in Philosophy Hall, the collection was divided and sold after his death. However, its books were incorporated into the university library and its dioramas of the Globe Theatre and other historic dramatic venues have been dispersed for public display around campus, mainly in Dodge Hall. Matthews was the inspiration for the now-destroyed Brander Matthews Theater on 117th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. An English professorship with his name still exists at Columbia. Matthews' students knew him as a man well-versed in the history of drama and as knowledgeable about continental dramatists as he was about American and British playwrights. Long before they were fashionable, he championed playwrights who were regarded as too bold for Americans, such as Hermann Sudermann, Arthur Pinero, and preeminently Henrik Ibsen, about whom he wrote frequently and eloquently. His students also knew him as an opinionated man with somewhat conservative politics. Playwright S.N. Behrman, who studied with him during 1917, recalled in his memoirs, "One day I made the mistake of bringing into class a copy of [the liberal magazine] The New Republic. I had, actually, a contribution in it. Matthews looked at The New Republic and said, 'I am sorry to see you wasting your time on that stuff.' As a staunch Republican and intimate of Theodore Roosevelt's, he had his duty to do." He could also be "easy and anecdotal", Behrman acknowledged, and he was respected on campus as a man-of-the-world He taught that performance was the main art of drama, not the literary texts of plays. Other students recalled him as a teacher who elicited "mingled affection and impatience" and who behaved in a manner that never attempted to hide his privileged life and connoisseurship. His relations with Columbia colleagues were sometimes adversarial. His conservatism became more pronounced during his later years: he was adamant about not admitting women to his graduate courses and publicly expressed the opinion that women did not have the natural ability to be great playwrights. According to Mark Van Doren, he taught an "ancient" American literature elective that he refused to revise over the decades. Not surprisingly, he was a natural target for the World War I-era generation of writers and activists. Reviewing Matthews' autobiography in 1917, the radical critic and fellow Columbia graduate Randolph Bourne complained that for Matthews, "literature was a gesture of gentility and not a comprehension of life". In his publication On Native Grounds, Alfred Kazin characterized him as a "literary gentleman".Matthews taught a number of students who later had major dramatic careers, including playwright Behrman and drama critics Stark Young, Ludwig Lewisohn, and John Gassner.

Price: 199.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2025-01-06T12:28:00.000Z

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