Contents

Collection Overview

Historical Note

Scope and Contents of the Collection

Organization of the Records

Search Terms

W. Clyde Fitch (AC 1886) Collection, 1867-1986 (bulk 1883-1909)

Finding Aid

Finding aid prepared by Peter Nelson.

Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

© 2007

Historical Note

W. Clyde Fitch (AC 1886) was a prolific and highly successful American playwright best known for plays of social satire and character study. Notable for having four of his plays running concurrently on Broadway, he went on to write and produce, in a twenty-year period, thirty-six original plays, twenty-one adaptations, and five dramatizations of novels. His name alone was enough to draw large audiences, and his works were produced throughout the United States and in Europe as well. He was the first American dramatist to be regularly produced abroad. The critic and scholar William Lyon Phelps wrote in 1921, "when [Fitch] began to write, American drama scarcely existed; when he died it was reality.... He did more for American drama than any other man in our history."

William Clyde Fitch was born in Elmira, New York on May 2, 1865. He spent part of his childhood in Schenectady, New York, and attended the Holderness School, Plymouth, New Hampshire, before attending Amherst College. At Amherst he was known among his classmates as "Billy" (after his given name William, which he later dropped) and was active in dramatic productions; his literary publications in college were mainly verse, including his Grove Oration speech in 1886. His first successful play, Beau Brummel (1890), was written especially for the actor Richard Mansfield. Subsequent plays of that period were largely melodramas and historical works that were less successful than his comedies of the early 1900s, including The Climbers (1901), Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901), The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902), The Truth (1907) and The City (1909). However, the popularity of his works on the stage barely exceeded his own lifetime.

Fitch was an avid collector of books, antiques and art, with which he filled his home at 113 East 40th St., New York City (a residence that, for a time, was one of New York's most famous salons), as well as at his other homes at Katonah, New York; and Greenwich, Connecticut. The "Clyde Fitch Memorial Room" in Converse Hall at Amherst College was a gift to the College from Fitch's mother. It contained many of the furnishings and most of the books that were in his study in New York City.

Clyde Fitch died on September 4, 1909, one week after an operation for appendicitis in Châlons-sur-Marne, France, at age 44.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

Correspondence, annotated play scripts, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, articles and photographs documenting the literary career, works, and personal life of Clyde Fitch (1865-1909), American dramatist and graduate of Amherst College in the Class of 1886. Correspondents include Robert Browning, Richard Harding Davis, William Dean Howells and William Lyon Phelps.

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Search Terms

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Organization of the Records

This collection is organized into 6 series:

• 1. Biographical Materials, 1890-1986
• 2. Scrapbooks and Clippings, 1883-1920
• 3. Correspondence, 1882-1909
• 4. Writings, 1879-1910
• 5. Pictures and Photographs, 1867-1909
• 6. Personal Affairs, 1903-1907

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Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1890-1986

Series 2: Scrapbooks and Clippings, 1883-1920

Series 3: Correspondence, 1882-1909

Series 4: Writings, 1879-1910

Series 5: Pictures and Photographs, 1867-1909

Series 6: Personal Affairs, 1903-1907