Peggy to her Playwrights: The Letters of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent
By (Author) Colin Chambers
By (author) Peggy Ramsay
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Oberon Books Ltd
1st April 2019
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Theatre studies
Biography: writers
Literary studies: plays and playwrights
Biography: arts and entertainment
792.092
Paperback
214
Width 130mm, Height 210mm, Spine 13mm
Peggy Ramsay (1908-1991) was the foremost play agent of her time. Her list of clients shows her to have been at the centre of British playwriting for several generations from the late 1950s on. To her remarkable array of clients, her letter writing was notorious, marked by searing candour, both a wondrous motivation and an unforgiving scrutiny to be feared. Peggy judged by the most exalted standards and lashed her writers when they failed to meet them. Her force of personality made her well-nigh irresistible. The letters she wrote to her writers and to producers are extraordinary documents, filled with all these qualities, and indiscreet, blasphemous and saucy to boot. Simon Callow
Colin Chambers, a former journalist and theatre critic, was Literary Manager of the RSC (1981-1997), and since 2014 has been Emeritus Professor of Drama at Kingston University.