[Christopher Fry breaks America, 1950-1951.] Fry’s own cuttings, with manuscript captions, largely from English and North American newspapers, many describing the success of John Gielgud’s US touring production of ‘The Lady’s Not For Burning’.

Long and almost universally-appreciative articles, with photographs and cartoons, reflecting the excitement and energy of the period during which Fry was, as Michael Billington writes in his entry on the playwright in the Oxford DNB, ‘a dominant figure in British drama’. Ranging from three continents, with a few articles in foreign languages (Swedish, German, French). Among the material are John Gielgud’s long statement ‘Mr. Gielgud discovers Mr. Fry’, New York Times, 5 November 1950; and Richard L. Coe, ‘ “Lady” Delights A Packed Gayety’, Washington Post, 21 March 1951. A note of discord is struck by two articles on a leaf captioned ‘Adverse criticism - capitalist and communist’: Ted Willis, ‘Mr. Fry takes the wrong turning’, Daily Worker, December 1950, and poem by Molly Day Thacher, ‘Observations in Verse About Plays by Christopher Fry - Other Views’, New York Times, 17 December 1950. The materal is in very good condition, with the inevitable discolouration of newspaper stock. The cuttings are laid down on forty loose leaves from a file. Beside each cutting on the leaf is attribution and dating in Fry’s own hand. There is also two cardboard partitions, on whose tags the playwright has written ‘August / December 1950’ and ‘January / March 1951’. Forty-five newspaper cuttings, several of some length, from papers including: New York Times, Ottowa Citizen, New York Journal, Washington Evening Star, Washington Daily News, Washington Post, Washington Sunday Star, Time, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Enquirer, New York Post, Current Literature, Daily Worker, Saturday Review of Literature, Sunday Chronicle, Recorder, Montreal Standard, Kensington News, the Star, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Chronicle, Leeds Guardian, Birmingham Post, New Statesman, Tatler, Books of Today, Sketch, East African Standard (Nairobi), Rhodesian Herald, Dunedin Evening Star, La Derniere Heure (Brussels), Politiken (Sweden), Natinaltidendes Kronik, Berlingske Tidente, Aftenbladet, Basler Nachrichten, Berlingske Aften.