The Celia and Delia Austrian Study Collection of Drama consists of English-language theater published before 1900. The initial collection, acquired by bequest from Delia Austrian in 1928, consisted almost entirely of late nineteenth and twentieth century publications dealing with the history of the drama, playwriting, theatrical biography and autobiography, stagecraft and related theatre arts, the text of modern English and American dramas, and certain other related ephemera. The Collection has since grown to include extensive holdings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and American drama, including annotated play books, manuscript cashbooks, playbills, and other theatrical ephemera.
In 1898 Delia graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree. After her graduation she worked on the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune. She is the author of numerous books including, most relevantly, The Feminist Movement in Modern Drama (1924). She shares the name of the Celia and Delia Austrian Study Collection with her twin sister, who tragically passed away in 1900 at the age of 26. The Austrian sisters’ papers are retained by the University of Chicago and also accessible at the Special Collections Research Center.
Click here to see the current complete print holdings of Austrian Collection in the Library Catalog.
A small number of manuscripts and prompt books from the Austrian Collection are located in the Codex Manuscripts Collection here.
(Augsburg, 1740?) http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10496813
