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Richard Penn Smith Collection
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Held at: Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Richard Penn Smith (1799-1854) was an American playwright, storywriter, and lawyer.
Consists of a bound volume containing two plays by Smith ( My Uncle's Wedding and The Sentinels), miscellaneous manuscripts, a letter in verse to his mother, a diary, documents, engraved portraits, clippings, and miscellaneous papers of the Smith family.
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This collection was processed in 2002. Finding aid written in 2002.
- Publisher
- Manuscripts Division
- Finding Aid Date
- 2002
- Access Restrictions
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Collection is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
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Collection Inventory
He kept it more or less faithfully from April 14, 1828, to August 1833; between then and July 1835, when it commences anew, a leaf has been excised. Then follow scattered entries from 1835 through January 23, 1844. His first entry: "April 14, 1828. This day appeared the first number of the Aurora and Pennsylvania Gazette, a diurnal formed by the junction of the papers, and on which occasion I withdrew from the editorial corps, which I joined in November 1822. The Aurora having been prostituted to all parties, is at length entirely shorn of his beam and become a mere vehicle for advertising cotton, codfish and the state of the markets." "April 15, 1830. Collected more materials for my essay on the progress of literature in Pennsylvania, wrote a sketch of my father, and something relating to Peter Markoe gathered from Mathew Carey. Enquired of David Paul Brown concerning my lost story Retribution. Took tea at Mrs. Britton's." One of the significant passages: "July 19, 1836. I have finished Col. Crockett's Adventure in Texas. The plates have already been steriotyped, and several formats have been worked off." The Dictionary of American Biography says, "To him also has been ascribed..." Now we know.
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Contains manuscripts of three plays by Smith:
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First performed at the Arch Street Theatre October 19, 1832. " My Uncle's Wedding, which was performed at the Arch Street Theatre, October 15, 1832, as an afterpiece to [Robert Montgomery] Bird's Oraloossa, and which was evidently a successful comedy, has not survived."--Arthur Hobson Quinn, History of the American Drama, p. 215
Physical Description1 folder
First performed at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, December 21, 1829. "A better [than Smith's own Wife at a Venture] adaptation from the French was The Sentinels, or The Two Sergeants, played in December 1829 at the Walnut Street Theatre. The play deserved its apparent success, for it is well constructed, the conversation is lively and, while the audience knows perfectly well that all must end happily, the sympathy is so well evoked for the two friends that a real interest is maintained." The Pennsylvania Historical Society has a manuscript in a later hand.
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"Formed into a tale entitled 'The Old Maid's Legacy,'" does appear as a short story in The Duchess of Padua and Other Tales, 1836. Indeed, the title story had been a play performed in 1836.
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Description--The Possessor, his capabilities of making money, and his disposition to save it. He was an incorrigible bachelor but had a daughter by a quadroon, a slave of his, of fair and beautiful complexion. He dies some years ago leaving the daughter in care of his mother and leaving her sole heir to his immense fortune." 52 pages, 4to. Page 48 lacking; pages 49-50 wrinkled and torn but legible; pages 49-53 in pencil; portion of page 52 smudged; two consecutive pages numbered 37. Possibly a short story or novella
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Plus a folio sheet of a false start. The story is incomplete.
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by Smith to his mother, undated, but probably from his school days. The poem ends:
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Including late 18th-century documents and a 1908 birth certificate with two photographs of drawing room scenes.
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Including a bill from William R. Smith to William Moore Smith, father of Richard. Several of the items concern Richard's school expenses, his tuition to Mr. Johnston, tailor's bills, and pocket money.
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Originally contained the miscellaneous items listed above in Folders 6, 8, and 9.
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