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Playwrights

Dion Boucicault     Robert Williams Buchanan    Bartley Campbell     AR Cazauran     C Haddon Chambers     Adolphe D'Ennery     Edgar Fawcett     WS Gilbert    William Gillette    Sydney Grundy    James A. Herne     Bronson Howard    William Dean Howells    Charles H. Hoyt     Henry Arthur Jones     Steele MacKaye     Brander Matthews      Peter Robertson     Victorien Sardou    Clinton Stuart     Augustus Thomas     Denman Thompson     Oscar Wilde    Charles Young

Of the 90 plus plays we know EJ Phillips performed in 70 were by British dramatists, 22 were originally French dramas, and 15 seem to have been by American playwrights --  though my list is not complete.   I don't think I've got all the French originals of plays adapted by others for the English stage.

Auguste Anicet Bourgeois 1806-1870 French dramatist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Anicet-Bourgeois  Prisoner for Life Union Square Theatre 1885

Elliott Barnes Artist's daughter Union Square Theatre  1886.

Adolphe Belot  (1829-1890) French dramatist wrote Esther Sandraz Palmer's Theatre 1891, Felicia or Woman's Love 1881 Union Square Theatre and others including Article 47.

Dion[ysius] Lardner Boucicault (1820-1890)  The Irish actor and dramatist is said to have written between 120 and 150 plays. "Not only was [he] the most successful and popular playwright of his eras, he also remained widely admired as an actor."  [Oxford]  He also served as a house dramatist and stage director at the Union Square and Madison Square Stock Companies.   

The "sensation scene" became a trademark of his work -- a "spectacular display of stage pyrotechnics ...exploding steam-boats, snowstorms and avalanches, duels and massacres, urban conflagrations -- these and dozens of other sensations kept audiences at a high level of tension especially as Boucicault began to use them nearly 20 years before he finally perfected the invention of fireproof scenery". [Intl Dictionary of Theatre]  

Hogan, Robert, Dion Boucicault, New York: Twayne Publishers Inc. 1969
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boucicault 

EJ Phillips made her professional stage debut in Boucicault's play London Assurance in 1852 in Hamilton Canada.  John Nickinson's greatest role was Havresack in Boucicault's Napoleon's Old Guard  

Maud Harrison made her stage debut in 1875 in Boucicault's The Flying Scud or Four-Legged Fortune, the first of the popular horse racing melodramas.

Boucicault was 63 in 1883.  His first wife died in the Alps shortly after their marriage.  Agnes Robertson, his second wife is not mentioned in these letters.  His third wife Louise Thorndyke Boucicault is briefly mentioned. 

Cleveland Nov. 17, 1893 Miss Elsie deWolfe did not gain her bit of diplomacy as Miss Ada Dyas & Mrs. Thorndyke Boucicault are engaged for A Woman of No Importance.  It was a cheeky bit of work for Miss deWolfe and she did not deserve to succeed.  And it is well for herself she didn't for, it would have been her third dramatic failure.

Biographer Richard Fawkes tells how Boucicault left New York for San Francisco in April 1885 with his son Dot, daughter Nina and Louise Thorndyke, who was then 21. They traveled to New Zealand and Australia.  Boucicault was 64.  He and Louise were married in Sept. in Sydney and Boucicault claimed to be a widower on the marriage certificate, though his wife Agnes Robertson was alive in London. Boucicault had been claiming they were never legally married.  Son and daughter promptly cabled their mother who took out an ad claiming he was a bigamist. The newlyweds were in no rush to return to America and when they did they appeared in his play The Jilt, which drew in crowds eager to see the couple.  

Dion Boucicault, Strang's Players and Plays of the last quarter century 1902

Boucicault as drama teacher
RF Dietrich, British Drama from 1890 to 1950, Death of Boucicault http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/britishdrama2.htm#Boucicault
Leaves from a dramatist's diary, Dion Boucicault, North American Review, Aug. 1889  http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABQ7578-0149-32 
Richard Fawkes Dion Boucicault Collection, Templeman Library, Univ. of Kent, Canterbury http://www.kent.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/theatre/boucicault/index.html
Dion Boucicault, Richard Fawkes, Quartet Books, 1979
Dion Boucicault Theater Collection, Univ. of South Florida http://www.lib.usf.edu/boucicault/
Dion Boucicault Theatre Programme Collection, Templeman Library, Univ. of Kent at Canterbury http://www.kent.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/theatre/boucicault/index.html
Dion Boucicault, Victorian Web http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/boucicault/ 
Union Square Theatre Records, Harvard Theatre Collection
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Boucicault

Boucicault is buried in Mt Hope Cemetery, Hastings on Hudson New York http://www.mounthopecemetery.com/index.html

Robert Williams Buchanan (1841-1901) English dramatist [Storm Beaten 1883 and Partners 1888 ], poet and novelist "wrote too much and too variously to achieve the highest results, but his lyric gift was strong, and there was abundant, if often ill-regulated, force in his novels [Dictionary of National Biography ]http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/buchanan/galletley.html  
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_Buchanan   http://www.robertbuchanan.co.uk/html/plays.html

Edward Bulwer Lytton 1803-1873 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton,_1st_Baron_Lytton Novelist, poet, politician and playwright, author of the Lady of Lyons [1861]and Money [1876]

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was an English- American playwright and author. She was best known for her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden (1911) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886).  https://books.google.com/books/about/Esmerelda.html?id=wKmxswEACAAJ
Author, with William Gillette, of Esmerelda.

Bartley Campbell (1843-1888) was one of the first American dramatists to make playwriting his profession.  However he died insane. (Oxford Concise Comp Theatre).  "From 1876 until his mental breakdown in 1885 he was America's most popular melodramatist. EJ Phillips played Mamie Maxwell in Bartley's Campbell's Separation in 1884 at the Union Square Theatre.

Boston, Oct. 1, 1887 We could keep on playing Jim [the Penman] here for another four weeks to big business.  The business seems to increase with every week.  The musicians had to give up their seats last night and go under the stage.  Some are prognosticating that it will run again all this season at Mad[ison] Sq'[uar]e [Theatre]. If so we shall all be ready in the Spring to join Bartley Campbell in your big town house.  

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartley_Campbell

Lewis Strang in Players and Plays writes of Bartley Campbell "though only a deviser of sensational melodrama, was in some respects a remarkable man. He apparently barely missed being a genius, thereby becoming that pathetic thing, known as brilliantly erratic. Although he had far more original ability than the men about him who succeeded, Campbell made a failure of everything he tried, except the writing of wild melodramas, and he died abject and poor, under the most tragic circumstances."

New York Times May 1886 reported that Bartley Campbell was committed to Bellevue and then  taken from Bellevue to the Bloomingdale Asylum "where he will probably spend the remainder of his life"  The Actor's Fund and the Elks  contributed to his support.  https://www.nytimes.com/1886/05/14/archives/committed-to-bellevue-an-examination-of-bartley-campbells-mental.html  https://www.nytimes.com/1886/05/18/archives/taken-to-bloomingdale-bartley-campbell-to-receive-special.html   https://www.nytimes.com/1886/05/25/archives/bartley-campbells-sanity.html

His New York Times obituary says he went to the State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane in  Middletown in Nov 1886.  AM Palmer was appointed receiver of his "unsettled affairs"  https://www.nytimes.com/1886/11/30/archives/bartley-campbells-estate.html
About Stage Folks by William Ellis Horton 1902 http://books.google.com/books?id=tQQOAAAAYAAJ&dq=buried+%22May+brookyn%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s   says that Bartley Campbell is buried in Pittsburg Pennsylvania.

Augustus R Cazauran (1820-1889) was hired by AM Palmer as a play reader and became his right hand man, and a celebrated play doctor.  Prior to his theatrical career he had been imprisoned as a spy, worked as a journalist, and wrote a once famous eyewitness account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  [Oxford Companion American Theater]  http://www.answers.com/topic/augustus-r-cazauran

Cazauran had an eager and adventurous taste in drama and the fact that he often recommended and pleaded the cause of plays a little out of the conventional line of the day may be the reason for the statement that three of Palmer's most successful productions The Two Orphans, Sir Charles Young's melodrama Jim the Penman, and Alabama by Augustus Thomas, were urged upon him against his own will and judgment. [AM Palmer, Dictionary of American Biography] 

Bronson Howard gave great credit to AR Cazauran as "reconstructor" (JH Stoddart's word, according to his autobiographical Recollections of a Player) of The Banker's Daughter (Union Square 1878).  EJ Phillips played Mrs. Holcomb.

Clara Morris's autobiography Life on the Stage called Cazauran "that ferret faced, mysterious little man, whose clever brain and dramatic instincts made him so valuable about a theatre".

In January 1881 Palmer produced AR Cazauran's adaptation of D'Ennery's play The Creole, EJ Phillips playing the Countess de Maillepre.  Cazauran's play The Fatal Letter, a Civil War drama with a Confederate heroine had Charles Walcott(husband of Isabella Nickinson) in the cast, but closed after two weeks and was declared a failure in 1884.   EJ Phillips reported that he had joined Palmer's company in Boston in 1886 to rehearse his adaptation of The Martyr "Queer as the old boy is, I felt rather glad to see him & he seemed delighted to be with us."

A NY Times report of a benefit for Cazauran in Dec 1888 https://www.nytimes.com/1888/12/31/archives/the-cazauran-benefit.html said that actress Louisa Eldridge was among those selling flowers in the lobby and that Maurice Barrymore, Herbert Kelcey and Edward Bell were ushers.

NY Times obituary Jan 28 1889  reported that he witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, wrote the first report on for the Washington Chronicle and was the Associated Press reporter for "the trials of the assassins and conspirators. ... He did some admirable work as an adapter but his efforts at original playwriting were failures."  His adaptations were listed as The Danicheffs, Daniel Rochat, Article 47, The Martyr and several others.https://www.nytimes.com/1889/01/28/archives/ar-cazauran-dead-his-busy-life-ends-after-much-and-long-suffering.html
 
Pittsburgh Dispatch https://panewsarchive.psu.edu/lccn/sn84024546/1889-01-28/ed-1/seq-6/ocr/

Cazauran's manuscript autobiography is in the Library of the Players' club according to Ryan's dissertation on AM Palmer.  

Charles Haddon Chambers (1860-1921) New York Times obituary https://www.nytimes.com/1921/03/29/archives/c-haddon-chambers-dramatist-dies-at-60-author-of-captain-swift-the.html
Australian Dictionary of National Biography with photo http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070612b.htm     
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haddon_Chambers His first real success was Captain Swift, which was produced by Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre in the autumn of 1888. ...The famous London-based Australian operatic  soprano, Dame Nellie Melba, was his mistress for a number of years. The relationship ended in 1904 for reasons which remain unclear.

Augustin Daly Theatre managers  Adapted from the French Leah the Forsaken [1863], Article 47 and Frou Frou [1894]

Adolphe D'Ennery (1811-1899) French dramatist and novelist 
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_d'Ennery  The Two Orphans (1875) "perhaps his best piece with Eugene Cormon."

The Union Square Theatre  Two Orphans, in which EJ Phillips played the Countess in 1880, Duprez & Son in 1884, EJ Phillips played Suzanne and The Creole in 1881 -- EJ Phillips played the Countess de Maillepre. 

Alexandra Dumas père  (1802-1870) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas,_p%C3%A8re  French novelist and dramatist wrote The Count of Monte Cristo, in which James O'Neill (father of Eugene O'Neill) performed at the Union Square Theatre in 1883 and for many years afterwards.

Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895)
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas,_fils  son of the novelist wrote La Dame aux camélias which became Camille in English, his first great success and on which Verdi's opera La Traviata is based. He also wrote The Danicheffs in which EJ Phillips played the Countess Danicheff at the Union Square Theatre in 1878 and Fair Fame 1887.

Edgar Fawcett 1848-1904 primarily a poet and novelist wrote A False Friend in which EJ Phillips played Lady Ogden at the Union Square Theatre in 1880.

Georges Feydeau 1862-1921 French playwright  
Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Feydeau wrote  Gay Parisians [1895-1897], originally L'Hôtel du libre échange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27H%C3%B4tel_du_libre_%C3%A9change with Maurice Desvallierès

William Schwenk Gilbert (1836-1911) 
Wikipedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._S._Gilbert 
 English dramatist best known for his collaborations with composer Arthur Sullivan, but also the author of Engaged [1886] and Broken Hearts, an Agnes Booth vehicle

William Gillette (1853-1937) Actor, playwright and manager 
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gillette   Wrote with Frances Hodgson Burnett's the play   Esmeralda, a long term vehicle for Annie Russell. Joined the Madison Square Theatre Company in 1887. Hired by the Frohmans.

Salt Lake City 1896 "Last night Mr. [Gustave] Frohman came behind the scenes very much elated over a letter he had rec'd from his brother Charles [Frohman] saying that in May next he was going to send Gay Parisians and Too Much Johnson to Australia."  Too much Johnson had been adapted by Gillette from the French play by Ordonneau.

Gillette as Sherlock Holmes  1936 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38HgyxMThOw&feature=related   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfHaVFKSYGE&feature=related  
Gillette Castle, East Haddam Connecticut  http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?A=2716&Q=325204  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette_Castle_State_Park  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_B6efmiAIc&feature=related

Union Square Theatre Records, Harvard Theatre Collection

Sydney Grundy 1848-1914 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Grundy  author/adapter of Martyr, Broken Seal, A New Woman and A Pair of Spectacles

James A. Herne (1839-1901) American actor and dramatist, pioneered Ibsen, inspired realistic drama in US.  Dictionary of American Biography  

Lewis Strang writes that "Mr. Herne's first great success was "Hearts of Oak" which was brought out in San Francisco in 1878. It had a wonderful vogue for ten or twelve years, and earned a fortune for the author. Mr. Herne described it as a melodrama without a villain.... In 1888 he produced in Chickering Hall, in Boston, "Margaret Fleming," a serious drama, which proved to be the forerunner of the 'problem plays." The work was a little in advance of its time, though it barely missed being a success. The feature of the production was the marvelously realistic acting of Mrs. Herne, who is said to have been largely responsible for the personality and opinions of the heroine. 

Wikipedia accessed 2018 Jan 28 American playwright and actor.^[1] He is considered by some critics to be the "American Ibsen", and his controversial play Margaret Fleming is often credited with having begun modern drama in America. Herne was a Georgist and wrote Shore Acres to promote the political economy of Henry George.^[2] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Herne

New York, Dec. 2, 1891 I am still doing nothing and am very tired of it.  It makes me feel old and useless.  Alabama is still drawing well they tell me.  A new play, Margaret Fleming is to be produced but it is an outside speculation.  James A. Herne is the author and his wife plays the leading part, and if successful will star in it.  Only 3 of the company play in it -- Messrs [EM] Holland, [Charles L.] Harris & [Edward M]  Bell.  It is for next Wednesday Matinee only.

Strang's Players and Plays of the Last Quarter Century, 1902


Mrs. James A. Herne [Katharine Corcoran] (1857-1943) actress, most famous for the title role in Margaret Fleming

Bronson Crocker Howard  (1842-1908) , author of The Banker's Daughter,         , Aristocracy, Saratoga. In Memoriam-- Bronson Howard, published by the American Dramatists Club, New York, 1910 contains a biography by H. P. Mawson, an appreciation by Brander Matthews, The  Autobiography of a Play by Bronson Howard and a list of the plays with the original casts. "The Autobiography of a Play http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18769  (1914) gives a detailed, fascinating history of The Banker's Daughter [1878 1883] and provides numerous insights into his character." Oxford Companion   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronson_Howard 

Lewis Strang Players and Plays on Bronson Howard "Augustin Daly was responsible for the first success of the man, who probably more than any other, is entitled to rank as the leading American dramatist. Bronson Howard became notorious through the popularity of his frivolous and vulgar farce, "Saratoga" which was produced by Daly in the early seventies; but Mr. Howard's reputation was solidly established by some half dozen later dramas that ranged from light comedy to vigorous melodrama. These six plays were "Old Love Letters, " "The Banker's Daughter, "Young Mrs. Winthrop," The Henrietta", Shenandoah," and "Aristocracy". .. Mr. Howard expected to enter Yale so as to be graduated with the class of 1865, but his eyesight failed, and he went into newspaper work instead. ... In such plays as The Banker's Daughter and Aristocracy, all of Mr. Howard's characters resided in residences, and they invited one another to be seated in drawing-rooms, from which they retired for a night's rest. In no one work did Mr. Howard declare the best that was in him so effectually as in Old Love Letters, a one-act comedietta, which bordered on the sentimental but never quite emerged in to it, which was exquisite in feeling, delicate in pathos, spontaneous and delightful in the fine sensibility of its humour, and genuine in its sincerity. To see this playlet, with all its subtleties and suggestions, revealed by the insinuating and authoritative art of Agnes Booth,  was indeed a theatrical experience, rich, full and complete.

Bronson Howard Autobiography of a Play Dramatic Museum of Columbia University 1914 http://books.google.com/books?id=3cMCAAAAYAAJ&vq=cazauran&dq=autobiography+of+a+play&source=gbs_navlinks_s   writes about the Banker's Daughter.
Bronson Howard, Drama 1860- 1918 http://www.bartleby.com/227/1110.html    Autobiography of a play http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18769
In Memoriam Bronson Howard, American Dramatists' Club 1910 http://books.google.com/books?id=A7PTAAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronson_Howard

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) author of some 36 plays, was "a writer of charming dialogue but incapable of producing the melodramatic confrontations demanded by 19th century audiences" [Cambridge Guide Am Theatre]), adapted by Edward M. Alfried Nov 1886.  EJ Phillips was cast as Mrs. Vervaine in his Foregone Conclusion in 1886.

c1870  

Project Gutenberg, Complete Works of William Dean Howells http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3400 
Wikipediaa   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dean_Howells
William Dean Howells on vaudeville Harpers Monthly Magazine April 1903

Charles H. Hoyt (1860-1900) American dramatist, whose plays can be seen as "primitive musical comedies".  Palmer's Madison Square Theatre was taken over by Hoyt (and Charles Thomas) in 1891, when Palmer assumed management of Palmer's Theatre.  [King NYC, DAB] Odell, in reflecting on the death of Lawrence Barrett (in 1891) said" The thoughtless herd prefers Charles H. Hoyt to Shakespeare and Sheridan."  His Trip to Chinatown, set in San Francisco, ran from Nov. 1891 to Aug. 1893, the longest consecutive run of any American play.  This record lasted until 1918. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hale_Hoyt

Cullen Murphy, The Scrapbook: An accidental encounter with two briefly famous lives, Atlantic Nov. 1, 2001 http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/11/murphy.htm
Elwood Joseph Annaheim, A Trip to Chinatown: Charles H. Hoyt and Broadway of the 1890s, 1999 http://www.oocities.org/vienna/1052/trip/china.html
Hoyt, Cliff and Linda, Charles Hoyt, Popular Playwright of the Gay 1890s  2009 http://www.oocities.org/vienna/1052/trip/china.html
New York Times obituary Nov. 21, 1900 https://www.nytimes.com/1900/11/21/archives/charles-h-hoyt-is-dead-wellknown-playwright-succumbs-to-paresis-at.html
Mrs. Charles H. Hoyt (c. 1873-1898) Caroline Miskel  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Miskel-Hoyt

Hendrik Ibsen (1828-1906)  Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen

Pillars of Society 1890 EJ Phillips rehearsed in, but Palmer never produced it. 
A doll's house or Breaking a butterfly, adapted by Henry Arthur Jones 1890

1884- Although the original script was forbidden to be performed in London, an adaptation of A Doll’s House by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman renamed Breaking a Butterfly premiered at the Princess Theatre in London  https://pages.stolaf.edu/th271-spring2014/production-history-a-dolls-house/

The Mausoleum of Ibsen, William Archer,  Fortnightly Review, London, July 1893 (Vol. 60, pp. 77 - 91) http://www.ibsen.net/index.gan?id=35363&subid=0

Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), was a contemporary of Arthur Wing Pinero and George Bernard Shaw and "a leading dramatist of his day...although his gift for comic aphorisms was inferior to Wilde's and his characters rarely as fascinating as Pinero, his best works remain interesting period pieces" [Oxford Companion] He was the Madison Square Theatre stage director in 1885.   Jones and Saints and Sinners  Other plays by Jones EJ Phillips acted in  included Heart of Hearts, Judah, Middleman, Wealth and Welcome Little Stranger.

RF Dietrich, Henry Arthur Jones, The Earnest Victorian, British Dramatist, "As a dramatist he tried to show the way by attempting a high drama concerned with serious matters; in this he made the best of what talents he had, achieving a considerable popularity that lasted for over thirty years. In old age Jones might have looked back with satisfaction on a worthwhile career, but instead his old age was filled with gall and wormwood.  The circumstances of his life, and the limitations of his talent and vision, conspired ultimately to make his career one of the sad tales in the annals of British theater.  His is the very familiar story of the late Victorian who was unable to free himself sufficiently from the ghosts of the past. Though he intellectually rebelled against his provincial, fundamentalist Christian upbringing, it overwhelmed him emotionally at crucial times and distorted his responses to life."
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/britishdrama2.htm#Jones  

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Arthur_Jones

Lewis Strang writes of Jones in Players and Plays of the last quarter century that his "first big success came in 1882" with The Silver King.  "The melodrama displayed considerable florid rhetoric, but theatrically it was immense.  In 1884 Mr. Jones had his first experience with Ibsen, whom he was instrumental in introducing him to the English theatre. How little Jones understood the Scandinavian may be deduced from the fact that he and Mr. Herman , in adapting "A Doll's House" under the title of "Breaking a Butterfly," ended their version with a reconciliation between Nora and her husband.

Jones, Doris Arthur, Taking the curtain: Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones, New York: MacMillan 1930 http://www.questia.com/library/book/taking-the-curtain-call-the-life-and-letters-of-henry-arthur-jones-by-doris-arthur-jones.jsp  

James Brander Matthews (1852-1929) DCL University of the South 1899, educator, scholar, critic and playwright.  Taught drama at Columbia (1891-1924) and wrote 24 books.  EJ Phillips played Mrs. Webster in Margery's Lovers in 1887 at the Madison Square Theatre. These many years: recollections of a New Yorker, Brander Matthews 1917 http://books.google.com/books?id=05yxAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Margery's+Lovers%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s  talks about Margery's Lovers, AM Palmer and the Union and Madison Square Theatre Companies. 

American writer and educator. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at an American university and played a significant role in establishing theater as a subject worthy of formal study in the academic world. His interests ranged from Shakespeare, Molière, and Ibsen to French boulevard comedies, folk theater, and the new realism of his own day. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brander_Matthews 

James Brander Matthews, Columbia Encyclopedia http://www.bartleby.com/people/Matthews.html 

Matthews, Brander. These Many Years: Recollections of a New Yorker. New York: Scribner, 1919. https://archive.org/details/thesemanyyearsr01mattgoog/page/n8

Buried Greenwood Cemetery Brooklyn http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=42004154

Peter Robertson (1847-1911)  Playwright and critic, known for writing some reviews in dialogue form, for many years reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. His Social Scandal was performed at the Madison Square Theatre in 1887.  EJ Phillips wrote that she was in the first and last acts only. 

Jan 9, 1887  Then to San F'co by St Paul and Northern Pacific RR.  Jim the Penman will possibly run for the rest of the season, but there is to be a new play done by Mr. [Peter] Robertson of San F'co 

Thomas William Robertson 1829-1871 Anglo Irish dramatist
Robertson's plays became known as 'problem plays', because they dealt seriously and sensitively with issues of the day. In the 1850s and 1860s, Robertson's plays, both in style and substance, were considered revolutionary. Caste was about marriage across the class barrier and explored prejudices towards social climbing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_William_Robertson 

EJ Phillips acted in Caste 1876 and 1895.

Edward Rose 1849-1904  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Rose  English dramatist, known primarily for The Prisoner of Zenda, for which James Hackett was well known.  Also wrote Her Father produced at the Madison Square Theatre in 1890.  Not clear which role EJ Phillips played in that.

Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) French Dramatist best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play. He also wrote several plays that were made into popular 19th-century operas such as La Tosca (1887) and Fédora   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorien_Sardou  Many of his plays were written for Sarah Bernhardt.

 EJ Phillips appeared in his Daniel Rochat at the Union Square Theatre, went to see Fanny Davenport in Boston in  La Tosca and colleague Frederic Robinson appeared in Diplomacy.

Clinton Stuart 1852-1937 was in Article 47 at the Union Square Theatre in 1882.  His play Our Society, adapted from Le monde ou l'on s'ennuie by Edouard Pailleron closed the 1885-1886 Madison Square season, sustaining a profit in a two week engagement. His adaptation  Fair Fame in  1887 featured EJ Phillips as Mrs. Preston.

New York, Dec. 10, 1887 Saw Mr. Clinton Stuart last night and he said he had been reading a new play to AM P[almer] who was much pleased with it.  Mr. Stuart said in consideration of a very bad part I played for him in Fair Fame [Denise] by Alexandre Dumas, adapted by Clinton Stuart]  last season that he had written a very fine part for me in the new play. 

New York, Dec. 7, 1887 Mr. [Clinton] Stuart said to AM Palmer that he would not have his play put on for an Author's Matinee and AM said "Oh no, I will give it a chance for a run".  "It is too heavy to try at a matinee. It will want getting up".  But when he is going to try it, no one knows yet or if anyone does, it is not generally made known. 

Diary of Clinton Stuart, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1881 https://staging.miranda.folger.edu/detail/Diary-of-Clinton-Stuart/cca66948-a572-4a86-8824-c75ee7a3e95e

Augustus Thomas (1857-1934)  American playwright, author of Alabama, Colonel Carter of Cartersville and Man of the World.  EJ Phillips was in none of these plays.  

Thomas was hired to work as an assistant at Pope's Theatre in St. Louis. During this time, he wrote a one-act play called Editha's Burglar, based on a short story by Frances Hodgson Burnett called The Burglar. After touring in the play, he expanded the show to four acts, renamed it The Burglar, and was able to get Maurice Barrymore to play the title role. Subsequently, he was hired to succeed Dion Boucicault adapting foreign plays for the Madison Square Theatre. His first successful play, Alabama, was produced by Kirke La Shelle in 1891 and its financial reward allowed Thomas to write full-time. Alabama is the story of an un-reconstructed Confederate. Notably, Thomas was one of the first playwrights to make use of American material. ...According to the Oxford Companion to the Theatre, his plays are "on the whole, not profound, and provided entertainment of a kind acceptable to his audiences." Wikipedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Thomas 

"It was frequently noted that his curtain speeches at the first nights of his plays seemed sometimes to have more style and substance than the plays. This was perhaps because he was reared in the old- fashioned theatre of melodrama and sheer entertainment, and was quite unaffected by the "new drama" which came in during the nineties. (He makes no reference to it whatsoever in his autobiography, The Print of my Remembrance, 1922).  [Dictionary of American Biography] 

Lewis Strang in Players and Plays says Thomas was born in 1859, spent six years in the railroad business and then worked for St. Louis, Kansas City and New York newspapers. His "advance to a position in the van of American dramatists dates, however, from the production of his "Alabama," at Palmer's Theatre, New York, on November 2, 1891.  It was the first American play that AM Palmer had given for a long time ... To Mr. Palmer's great surprise, Alabama gained immediate favour and ran until the next spring. Its quiet sentiment, its delicacy and charm almost poetic, and especially its sweet atmosphere redolent with the fragrance of the magnolia and expressing so sympathetically Southern warmth, chivalry, and humour, were greatly admired.... Mr. Thomas's other State plays have been "In Mizzoura,", "Arizona," and "Colorado,", the last the only one in the number written to order and the only one to fail.

August Thomas (1859-1941) originally published in the British and American Drama of Today, Barrett Hl Clark, New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1915, pp 233-234
Augustus Thomas was born at St. Louis, in 1859. He says (quoted in The Outlook, December 28, 1912): "After Farragut ran the New Orleans blockade my father took direction of the St. Charles Theater in New Orleans, then owned by Ben DeBar.  http://www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/augustus_thomas_001.html
Autobiography The Print of My Remembrance 1922 http://books.google.com/books?id=4AovAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22augustus+thomas%22++cemetery&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Buried Bellefontaine Cemetery St. Louis http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?GRid=7387185&page=gr 

Denman Thompson  was an actor as well as a playwright, known primarily for the Old Homestead.  EJ Phillips knew him from his days in Toronto at the Royal Lyceum.  John Nickinson's daughter Eliza Nickinson Mrs. Charles Peters was in his play the Sunshine of Paradise Alley. more on Denman Thompson

Malcolm Watson . Author Pharisee and Social Fiction, produced at the Madison Square Theatre 1890- 1891 and Joseph produced by Ramsey Morris  1892-1893. theatre critic for the Daily Telegraph 1899-1926  

Oscar Wilde's Vera the Nihilist was produced at the Union Square Theatre in August 1883, while EJ Phillips was in San Francisco.  She played the Duchess of Berwick in Lady Windermere's Fan 1893-1894. more on Oscar Wilde

Charles Young (1839-1887) English barrister, baronet  and playwright had his biggest success with his last play Jim the Penman and died a year later, aged 48.

EJ Phillips and colleagues' plays by playwrights  bold EJ Phillips roles, italics Palmer productions   EJ Phillips' plays by title   Plays Chronology by year EJ Philips first performed

Last Revised Dec. 30 2020