Modern Drama Studies: An Annual Bibliography

Every year from 1960 to 19″69, this journal included Robert G. Shedd’s “Modern Drama: A Selective Bibliography of Works Published in English in [1959-1968].” It was much used and greatly appreciated. Despite its restriction to English-language materials and its severely limited coverage of journals, Shedd’s list was sorely lamented when it stopped appearing. The only passable alternative, the annual “MLA International Bibliography” in PMLA, then made its transition from a relatively up-to-date issue of a journal to an expanded, computerized project two years behind with its modern drama references sprinkled over two volumes and the need for a regeneration became compelling. “Modern Drama Studies: An Annual Bibliography” is intended as anew, improved version of the old ingroup checklist. The present installment covers material published in 1972 and 1973; the next one will pick up missed 1973 items and focus on 1974. Such overlapping will continue to be standard practice. Like its predecessor, the bibliography will be something more and something less than a catchall. The present one embraces all the expected areas, topics, and figures of modern world drama, as delimited in Myron Matlaw’s recent encyclopedia (see the review in the preceding issue of Modern Drama). I have accepted Matlaw as my guide except for smuggling in, as a kind of polemic self-indulgence, the first genuine modern among dramatists, Georg Buchner. The net has been spread primarily for scholarship, criticism, and commentary of some value to students of dramatic literature. Thus journalistic accounts of theatrical events, memoirs of actors and directors, and the like are not listed. Neither are most studies of the non-dramatic works of playwrights Brecht’s poems, Beckett’s novels, Camus’ essays.