Autograph typescript and manuscript drafts of Arnold Wesker's contribution to a composite play entitled Consequences, with related correspondence between him and Simon Reade

Comprises eighteen items related to the Gate Theatre Club's conception of a play to raise funds to found an International Script Unit, for which major playwrights were asked to write a short scene, independently of the other writers, picking up the play where the previous writer ended. Arnold Wesker's contribution was number six in the sequence and became the first scene of the second act. The first twelve items in the archive consist of correspondence between Wesker and Simon Reade, the literary manager of the Gate Theatre Club, dated 1990 to 1991, being three autograph manuscript postcards and nine autograph typescript letters, concerning the project from its initiation to its completion. The remaining six items consist largely of manuscript and typescript drafts of Wesker's scene, with many autograph corrections and revisions from the original handwritten draft to first, second, and third typed drafts.

Arnold Wesker, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the playwright and director, a past President of the International Playwrights' Committee, was born on 24 May 1932 in Stepney, London, to Jewish parents. For fuller details of his life and achievements see Who's who.

Access is unrestricted.

Purchased from Quaritch/Sotheby's on 31 July 1991.

In English.

Described in Sotheby's accompanying list of the manuscripts being offered for sale