London Stage Information Bank

Abstract

The data files were retrieved from the Lawrence University Archives in Appleton, WI on September 15, 2014 by Mattie Burkert, with the assistance of University Archivist Erin Dix. The code pages were scanned and emailed to Mattie by programmer Will Daland over the course of several months in 2015.

The files contained here represent a database constructed at Lawrence University between 1970 and 1978, under the direction of Professor Ben Ross Schneider, Jr. That database was titled The London Stage Information Bank. It was in turn based on an 11-volume, 8000-page reference series published by Southern Illinois University Press between 1960 and 1968, which was called _The London Stage, 1660-1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments & Afterpieces, Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment. Compiled From the Playbills, Newspapers and Theatrical Diaries of the Period_[http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000200105].

In 1970, Schneider was approached to create a computer index of the entire reference series. After 9 years, he produced The Index to The London Stage (SIU Press, 1979) [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000299859]. In the process, he and an extensive team of typists, editors, and programmers produced the Information Bank, a version of which is represented in these files.