The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library is the literary archive of Harold Pinter, which Pinter had first placed "on permanent loan" in the British Library in September 1993 [1] and which became a permanent acquisition in December 2007. [2] [3] [4]
On 11 December 2007 the British Library announced that it had purchased Pinter's literary archive for £1.1 million (approx. $2.24 million), augmenting its current "Harold Pinter Archive" of 80 boxes ("Loan 110 A"). [2] [3] [4] It now comprises "over one hundred and fifty boxes of manuscripts, scrapbooks, letters, photographs, programmes, and emails," constituting "an invaluable resource for researchers and scholars of Pinter's work for stage, cinema, and poetry." [2] [3]
Among its "highlights" are "an exceedingly perceptive and enormously affectionate run of letters from Samuel Beckett; letters and hand-written manuscripts revealing Pinter's close collaboration with director Joseph Losey; a charming and highly amusing exchange of letters with Philip Larkin; and a draft of Pinter's unpublished autobiographical memoir of his youth, 'The Queen of all the Fairies'," as well as "especially touching" letters from Pinter's "inspirational" Hackney Downs School English teacher and friend, Joseph Brearley. [2] [3]
According to the official BL press release, citing its head of Modern Literary Manuscripts, Jamie Andrews, the "extensive collection of correspondence" of "over 12,000 letters" in its expanded Pinter Archive "encompasses the personal, professional and political aspects of the legendary writer, whose career has covered directing, acting, screenwriting, poetry and journalism, as well as his original work for the theatre" and documents Pinter's "key role in post-War theatre and film ... through his extensive correspondence with [other] leading playwrights and literary figures such as Simon Gray, David Hare, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, John Osborne, and [Sir] Tom Stoppard, as well as actors and directors including Sir John Gielgud [corrected] and Sir Peter Hall." [3] This collection also "documents all international performances of Pinter's plays, as well as exchanges with academics that highlight Pinter's engagement with the global scholarly community. There is also extensive material relating to Pinter's commitment to human rights, covering his journalism, poetry and direct action." [3]
From 10 January through 13 April 2008, the British Library exhibited a "small temporary display, 'His Own Domain: Harold Pinter, A Life in Theatre', featuring a range of unique manuscripts, letters, photographs, and sound recordings from the archive charting Pinter's life in the theatre as an actor, director, and writer of some of the most significant and celebrated plays of the twentieth-century." [3]
After Pinter's death, the British Library updated its official Harold Pinter Archive Blog, posting a memorial notice on 29 December 2008, stating that "Harold was a formidable and generous champion of the Library and its work, and the British Library was immensely proud to have added the Pinter archive to our Manuscript Collections in 2007," and promising that "more detailed tributes" would be appearing there soon. On 6 January 2009, Jamie Andrews, Head of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library and custodian of Pinter's Archive, posted " 'Tender the dead, as you yourself would be tendered...' ", alluding to Hirst's monologue about the faces of the dead in his photograph album from No Man's Land which Pinter had requested that Michael Gambon read at his funeral, which took place on 31 December 2008.
Andrews begins by relating his experience as an invited panellist in the Allied Organization Program arranged by the Harold Pinter Society at the 2008 MLA Convention, on 28 December. Having seen Rupert Goold's production of No Man's Land (with Gambon as Hirst) "just a few days before news of Harold's passing" on the 24th, and "Already carrying the lines and images around" in his head when he "read of the use of Hirst's monologue as part of the funeral," he concludes: "As always with Pinter, there's a certain ambiguity to [Briggs's] swift response 'They're blank, mate, blank. The blank dead'. Personally, I'm with Hirst who, after a trademark 'silence', ripostes quite simply: 'Nonsense'."
Having catalogued the expanded Harold Pinter Archive (Add MS 88880), comprising 504 volumes, the British Library (BL) reopened it to qualified scholars for research in the Modern Literary Manuscripts room, where it is housed, on 2 February 2009. [5] [6] The Harold Pinter Archive catalogue went on-line on Monday 2 February 2009 and became fully visible on Tuesday 3 February. [7] [8] \
Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.
Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Lady Antonia Pinter.
Sir Michael John Gambon is an Irish-English actor. Gambon started his acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the original members of the Royal National Theatre. Over his six-decade-long career he has received three Olivier Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four BAFTA Awards. In 1999, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama.
No Man's Land is a play by Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975. Its original production was at the Old Vic theatre in London by the National Theatre on 23 April 1975, and it later transferred to Wyndham's Theatre, July 1975 – January 1976, the Lyttelton Theatre April–May 1976, and New York's Longacre Theatre from October–December 1976. It returned to the Lyttelton from January – February 1977. It is a two-act play.
Caroline Maitland (1858–1920) was an English poet and writer. She worked under the name "Dollie Radford" after she married Ernest Radford.
The Birthday Party (1957) is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter, first published in London by Encore Publishing in 1959. It is one of his best-known and most frequently performed plays.
The Room is Harold Pinter's first play, written and first produced in 1957. Considered by critics the earliest example of Pinter's "comedy of menace", this play has strong similarities to Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party, including features considered hallmarks of Pinter's early work and of the so-called Pinteresque: dialogue that is comically familiar and yet disturbingly unfamiliar, simultaneously or alternatingly both mundane and frightening; subtle yet contradictory and ambiguous characterizations; a comic yet menacing mood characteristic of mid-twentieth-century English tragicomedy; a plot featuring reversals and surprises that can be both funny and emotionally moving; and an unconventional ending that leaves at least some questions unresolved.
Michael Keith Billington OBE is a British author and arts critic. He writes for The Guardian, and was the paper's chief drama critic from 1971 to 2019. Billington is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008).
Transatlantic Review was a literary journal founded in 1959 by Joseph F. McCrindle, who remained its editor until he closed the magazine in 1977. Published quarterly, at first in Rome and then in London and New York, TR was known for its eclectic mix of short stories and poetry—by both young, previously unpublished writers and prominent authors such as Samuel Beckett, Iris Murdoch, Grace Paley and John Updike—as well as drawings, essays, and interviews with writers and theater and film directors.
The Theatre Archive Project is an ongoing project to reinvestigate British theatre history from 1945 to 1968, from the perspectives of both the theatregoer and the practitioner. The project is a collaboration between the British Library and the De Montfort University, and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project comprises a number of strands that support study of this period of British theatre history, as well as an opportunity to analyse and debate findings through a blog.
Bibliography for Harold Pinter is a list of selected published primary works, productions, secondary sources, and other resources related to English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who was also a screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist. It lists works by and works about him, and it serves as the Bibliography for the main article on Harold Pinter and for several articles relating to him and his works.
Harold Pinter and academia concerns academic recognition of and scholarship pertaining to Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (1930–2008), English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, political activist, and the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, at the time of his death considered by many "the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation."
"Art, Truth and Politics" is the Nobel Lecture delivered on video by the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature Harold Pinter (1930–2008), who was at the time hospitalised and unable to travel to Stockholm to deliver it in person.
Remembrance of Things Past is the 2000 collaborative stage adaptation by Harold Pinter and director Di Trevis of Harold Pinter's as-yet unproduced The Proust Screenplay (1977), a screen adaptation of À la recherche du temps perdu, the 1913–1927 seven-volume novel by Marcel Proust.
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the two largest libraries in the world, along with the Library of Congress. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The Basement is a television play by Harold Pinter. It was written first as a screenplay for a film, then revised for television and broadcast on 20 February 1967.
Harold Pinter and politics concerns the political views, civic engagement, and political activism of British playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature.
The Stefan Zweig Collection is an important collection of autograph manuscripts formed by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. After his death in 1942 his heirs continued to develop the collection, and donated it to the British Library in 1986. The collection includes many literary and music manuscripts, mainly in the composers' own hands.
