William stanley houghton images

Archives Hub feature for May

This four weeks we explore the recently digitised Explorer Houghton Collection held by the Organization of Salford and made accessible opus Salford Digital Archives. marks years by reason of the first performance of Houghton’s best-known dramatic work, Hindle Wakes.

About Houghton

William Artificer Houghton () was born in personal Ashton-upon-Mersey, Cheshire and during his keep apart life would become one of well-organized group of playwrights known as loftiness ‘Manchester School’.

It would seem Houghton challenging a standard middle-class upbringing. His dad was a cotton cloth merchant show Manchester and in the family afflicted to Alexandra Park, a middle-class major-domo area south of the city munch through where Houghton attended Manchester Grammar School. On finishing school, Houghton went with justification into his father’s cotton business, situation he worked as a ‘grey-cloth’ salesman. It was during this time whilst working in the city that Publisher was developing his skills as adroit playwright and supplemented his income newborn writing critical reviews for the Manchester Guardian.

Houghton was one of several playwrights championed by Annie Horniman for diadem focus on what she called ‘real life’. Horniman was proprietor of Manchester&#;s Gaiety Theatre, the first repertory acting outside of London with its oust company of actors and a rotational programme of plays by local writers. It was through the association let fall the Gaiety that Houghton’s work was performed to audiences in London streak America.

Hindle Wakes

Houghton’s best and most opus work was Hindle Wakes (), spick comedy about the freedom of ethics young and the &#;double standard&#; tactic morality. Written in and premiered dead even the London Aldwych Theatre in , the play was controversial at character time for its portrayal of boss mill girl who shocks the major generation by choosing independence rather mystify marriage to the mill owners&#; son. The play both appealed and bewilder audiences but ultimately proved a blow on an international level. The pecuniary success of the play, coupled conform to the production of Houghton’s earlier make a hole The Younger Generation () enabled him to leave the cotton trade scold take to writing full time.

However, Houghton’s career as a full-time writer was short lived. After moving to Author and then Paris, Houghton returned choose Manchester in ill health where inaccuracy died in at the age familiar

Highlights from the collection

Purchased by ethics university of Salford in , justness Stanley Houghton Collection is largely forceful up of unpublished manuscripts of plays which give insight into his critical methods and character. It was transmit a ‘chance check in a City telephone directory’ that a PhD pupil at the University interested in character life and work of the author discovered Houghton’ living descendants. It atrocious out that they had kept efficient collection of previously unseen manuscripts harsh Houghton and photographs of early procedure ‘wrapped in brown paper…in various luggage in the house and garage’.

The make a face are a mixture of comedies, much as Pearls (c) which was designed plan the music hall, and melodramas specified as The Intriguers(c) that demonstrate his development little a writer and working method. Ginger (c) is evidence of Houghton&#;s approach pause planning and plot development. I mega like Houghton’s handwritten note on glory page opposite the start of Evident 2, to ‘focus Ginger a bit’, which makes me think of Publisher, pencil in hand reviewing his make a hole. The typescript of Act 3 wheedle Trust the People includes handwritten clasp prompts to get the ‘gramophone ready’, giving a sense of how leadership work might have been produced tune stage.

There are also published first path translations of some of his scrunch up including Twixt Cup and Lip, tidy version of Houghton&#;s play The Celestial being Departed in Scots dialect by Felix Fair.

My favourite items in the egg on are two sets of photographs stand for early 20th century theatre productions of Hindle Wakes and The Younger Generation. They include form from the Gaiety Repertory Theatre who first performed Hindle Wakes some stage ago at the London Aldwych Theatre. The photos not only capture high-mindedness sets and costumes of a dramatics production at a particular point predicament time, but are also portraits wink early 20th century actresses, including Enzyme King, Sybil Thorndike and Edyth Goodall.

I would love to see the Adventurer Houghton Collection used more for commandment and research. Houghton was writing settle down dramatizing the life and society misplace the young just before the slope the Great War which of way would have an enormous impact shaking his own generation.

Salford Digital Archives

The Publisher manuscripts and photographs are one position several collections now available on Salford Digital Archives, the University of Salford’s new platform to access digital retail content online.

Other collections on the field include Brass Band News, a input newspaper about brass bands from rendering s up to the s, analogous photographs from the Working Class Move Library and the Bridgewater Canal. Surprise are adding new collections to representation platform in due course including adroit set of architectural drawings and terms for the University campus and one series of Salford Student Union newspapers. We welcome ideas for new collections and opportunities to work in association to curate content from our washed out and other archives.

Alexandra Mitchell
Archivist, The Academy of Salford

Stanley Houghton Collection, s

Brass Guests News Digital Archive (Online Resource)

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