Index to the Melville Collection
The Melville collection tells the story of a once thriving, theatrical family. The dynasty started with George Melville (1824-1898), a Shakespearian actor, who is reputed to have run away from home at the age of nine to join the travelling theatrical troupe of John Richardson.
His son Andrew Melville (1853-1896) was an actor and theatre proprietor in many towns and cities all over the country.
Andrew's two eldest sons Frederick & Walter carried on the tradition, acting in, managing, directing, producing and writing plays. They shared the proprietorship of the Lyceum Theatre in the Strand putting on their own plays, many of which were never published, and staging elaborate pantomimes, the titles of which they tried to keep secret every year until the last possible moment.
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Their sisters, Edith, Minnie, Kate and Beatrice were all actresses, and their brother Andrew Melville II (1882-1938) was also a successful actor and theatre manager and producer.
His son, Andrew Melville III (1912-1988), was also associated with the theatre, and was married to the actress Joan Matheson who apeared in Mrs. Dales' Diary.
Andrew III was the last Melville to be associated with the theatre. He retired in 1950. Seventeen years later he was inspired to write a book about his own family by reading the biographical work "Neath the Mask" by a descendant of another theatrical family, John East. John East himself, and Joan, Andrew's wife helped Andrew to make copious notes and to collect much family and theatrical memorabilia on the Melvilles . A first draft was eventually produced tentatively entitled THE MELVILLES OF MELODRAMA. Unfortunately the book has never been published. A letter exists from Harraps declining to publish it on the grounds that there was not enough interest in matters of this kind.
After Andrew III's death in 1988 the material he had assembled in writing the book was offered to the University of Sussex, by his widow Joan. They declined on the grounds that their courses didn't cover drama of this period, but suggested that the University of Kent, with its thriving Drama Department and its library collections of Victorian popular plays and playbills might be interested. The Templeman Library acquired the Melville collection with the help of Jan Shepherd of the Drama Department and Professor Louis James (English and American Literature) who held the chair of "Victorian Melodrama" at that time.
The collection consists of play texts, some photocopied playbills, programmes, photographs, items relating to specific theatres, publicity material and a large number of personal papers. The collection was acquired in several batches from 1990 onwards, including the purchase of the Bad Woman Dramas, plays written by Frederick Melville and Walter Melville. These were plays with a strong moral theme, very much suited to the tastes of the day.
The material, by this time, had no immediately apparent order and so the decision was taken to sort it into a series of categories consisting of theatres, biography, publicity material, periodicals, playtexts, programmes, playbills, Melville associates, music and miscellaneous. The collection comprises of c.1500 items.
Funding was received under the Non-Formula Funding Programme (" Follett Funding") to conserve and catalogue all the material in the "Victorian & Edwardian Theatre Collection".The documents were rehoused in acid free containers and are kept in a special store air conditioned by equipment bought with the non-formula funding provided by the Follett initiative. The cataloguing of the majority of the collection was done on the MODES+ for Archives system. The playbills, music, periodicals and programmes were catalogued by Lindsay McInally; the photographs by Sue Crabtree and all other documents by Sarah Griffin. The "Bad Woman Dramas" and the other MS. & typescript texts were catalogued by Lindsay onto the Library OPAC.
Please contact Mrs. S. Crabtree, Special Collections Librarian
for details of
access to the collections (S.A.Crabtree@kent.ac.uk)
(Last updated 20th October, 2009)
