E. Martin Browne Archive

E. Martin Browne (1900–1980) directed and taught modern and medieval religious drama, most notably T. S. Eliot's plays and the revived medieval York Cycle, which was the centrepiece of York's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. He was able to obtain official goodwill and permission for a production of the York Cycle which was public, prominent, and on a grand scale, at a time when the dramatic presentation of Biblical material was still controversial.

The E. Martin Browne archive is the property of Professor Meg Twycross, held at the University of Lancaster and contains a substantial amount of his material on medieval religious theatre. It includes scrap-books, prompt copies, notes, programmes, correspondence, photographs, teaching materials, research notes and books, most importantly of the 1950s and 1960s York productions, but also of his other productions of medieval religious theatre in Britain and in the USA.

It also contains some vintage audio material, including eleven minutes of unique sound-recording of the 1951 production (including some lines from Doomsday). This has been lodged with the National Sound Archive, who have supplied the archive with a CD of the retrieved audio. Materials in the archive can be accessed by application to Professor Meg Twycross, University of Lancaster: m.twycross@lancs.ac.uk