Missing from most accounts of the history of British traditional drama scholarship, until quite recently at least, has been any reference to the Carpenter Collection British folk plays which is housed in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. In 1927 the American, James Madison Carpenter, began collecting Anglo-American folk songs for his Harvard doctoral dissertation. While visiting Britain to conduct research, Carpenter became interested in traditional drama and eventually went on to collect information on some three hundred plays from over one hundred and fifty locations. This can only be described as a monumental and unique achievement, for no other comparable collection from the early part of this century exists.
In 1972, the Library of Congress purchased the entire collection from Dr. Carpenter - including dictaphone cylinders, acetate discs, typescripts, drawings, photographs, and music manuscripts. Though primarily British in focus, the collection does contain some American materials collected by Carpenter and his students at Duke University. In addition to ritual drama, the collection is rich in ballads, carols, sea shanties, children's songs and games, and examples of ritual dance.
Because the existence, extent and quality of Carpenter's research was not known about in Britain until almost fifty years after the collection was made, the potential impact of his research has only just begun to be assessed. To redress the imbalance and recognise his achievements, I shall be exploring Carpenter's motivations, looking at a selection of the materials he collected, examining his working methods and considering his perceptions of the materials with which he worked.
[Ron Shuttleworth Collection holds audio tape recording, with transcript - under inderdict from Paul Smith.]