Overview
Business and personal papers of American actress and theatrical manager Fanny Davenport and members of her family (Seymour family).
Dates
- Creation: 1870-1979
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
Extent
7 linear feet (4 boxes)The collection contains business and financial records for the Fanny Davenport Company, mostly from 1880-1898, including theatrical contracts; transportation, equipment, and costume records; correspondence with playwrights (including Frances Aymar Mathews, Victorien Sardou) and agents (Elisabeth Marbury); and Davenport's household management and real estate records.
The remainder of the collection contains documents and photographs from the family of Fanny Davenport's nieces, May Davenport Seymour (Curator of the Theatre Collection, Museum of the City of New York), and actress Fanny Lydia Davenport Seymour Field, who married Princeton geology professor Richard Montgomery Field (1885-1961).
Biographical / Historical
Fanny Lily Gypsy Davenport (1850-1898) was an American actress and theatrical manager. She was the child of Edward Loomis Davenport and Fanny Elizabeth Vining Gill Davenport. In 1882 she started her own theatrical company, the Fanny Davenport Company, which toured the United States with productions of Fedora, La Tosca, Cleopatra, and Gismonda, among others. She was married first to Edwin H. Price (from 1879 to 1888) and then to Melbourne MacDowell (from 1889). She had no children from either marriage.
Her sister, May Davenport, married William Seymour (1855-1933) and had children, including May Davenport Seymour (1856-1927; married to William Stanley Eckert) and Fanny Lydia Davenport Seymour (married to Richard Montgomery Field).
Arrangement
The collection is organized into the following series:
- I. Fanny Davenport papers
- ___A. Correspondence
- ___B. Business and financial records
- ___C. Cancelled checks
- II. Seymour family papers
- ___A. Family correspondence
- ___B. Family business, financial, and miscellaneous records
- ___C. Family photographs
- ______1. Photographs by name
- ______2. Photographs by date and unidentified
Physical Location
b
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number. Purchase; received: 2000.
Processing Information
Totsaporn Intarabumrung, under the supervision of Beth Carroll-Horrocks. Processing continued by Kathy Bencowitz, 2003; and completed by Bonnie B. Salt, 2012
- Title
- Davenport, Fanny, 1850-1898. Fanny Davenport collection, 1870-1979: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou01820
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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