Add MS 83082-83083

Eleanor Farjeon Papers. Vols. vi-vii. ‘Dumas Gives a Party’; 6 Sept. 1932-28 Sept. 1939, n.d. Mostly typewritten. Unproduced play drawn from the memoirs of Alexandre Dumas père. The play was never staged, partly because another play on the life of Dumas by Jules Goodman was staged at the same time at the New Theatre, London. While initial work on the play was carried out in the 1930s, Eleanor Farjeon’s diary records that she attended a meeting about the play at the Old Vic Theatre on 26 March 1945 (see Add. 83163). In 1936, Henry Davray registered a French adaptation of the work for performance in Paris. For ‘Material for a Suit’, a play based on the Mémoires de Monsieur d’Artagnan, from which Dumas developed his LesTrois Mousquetaires, see Add. 83102 . Eleanor Farjeon also wrote a short, prose piece titled ‘When Dumas Gave a Party’ published in The New Book of Days (1941), pp. 232-233.

Two volumes.