Library News for the Faculty

New UC eScholarship Repository Resource: The Journal of John Waldie: Theatre Commentaries, 1799 - 1830

In January 1799 John Waldie, a seventeen-year-old student at the University of Edinburgh, began his journal with the anticipatory title "The Adventures of John Waldie." Made until 1864, shortly before his death, his almost daily entries record, among more routine matters, his extensive travels and observations in the great theaters, museums, and concert halls of Europe.

This electronic resource contains approximately one thousand entries from Waldie's journal, primarily his commentaries on performances, but also episodes from his travels and personal encounters. The editor is Frederick Burwick, UCLA professor emeritus of English. The journal is unpublished, but it is cited extensively in Burwick's forthcoming book Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting (Cambridge University Press, February 2009).

Waldie was one of the proprietors of the Theatre Royal in Newcastle; many of his entries discuss theaters in Newcastle, Edinburgh, and Bath. He also spent entire seasons in London and attended performances at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and entries record meetings with leading composers as well as prominent actors and actresses such as John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons.

Composed of searchable and downloadable PDF files, the electronic resource is a transcript in fifteen hundred typed pages. It includes an introduction with biographical and historical background; addenda such as images of Waldie, his estate, theaters, and selected manuscript excerpts; and an index with a complete list of plays mentioned, cross-referenced with John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage: From the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 (Bath, England: H.E. Carrington, 1832).

The Journal of John Waldie is held by the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections. Lawrence Clark Powell purchased the collection of ninety-three volumes of manuscript journals and letters in 1957. The total collection contains seven volumes of letters addressed to Waldie; seventy-three volumes of his journal, from which twenty-five numbered volumes are missing; eleven volumes about travels transcribed from journal entries; one volume of passports (1827-37); and one volume that includes a narrative about Waldie's experiences at Antwerp and Brussels during the Battle of Waterloo and his subsequent tour through Flanders, Holland, and France.

Lucinda Newsome, head of administrative services and acquisitions, managed the project as the department's eScholarship Repository site administrator/editor. Other repository projects she has managed for the department include the papers from a conference on poet Edgar Bowers and a symposium on the Sleepy Lagoon Case.

The project was made possible by the Bernadine Zelenka Endowment to support the publications of the Research Library Department of Special Collections.

Faculty members who want to deposit postprints or conference proceedings in the eScholarship Repository should contact Bonnie Tijerina, digital collections services librarian, by phone at 310.206.3388 or by email.