Alexander Street Press has just launched a groundbreaking electronic collection of the full text of 1,200 plays by writers from America, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the entire African Diaspora, from Victorian times to the present. Hundreds of the works in Black Drama have never before been published. The works are extensively indexed and SGML-coded. Accompanying the texts are details on production companies, theaters, cast lists, character details, scene details, and more. A database of color images of posters, playbills, tickets and other items is included. Release 1 contains 207 plays by 64 playwrights. The collection will reach the 1,200-play count within approximately one year.

The complete collection will deliver the works of hundreds of important authors, including Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Femi Euba, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), August Wilson, James Baldwin, Rita Dove, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Angelina Weld Grimke, and more than a hundred others. Authors are added to the project daily, with over 130 writers represented so far.

“Much of the manuscript material has been in danger of going lost forever,” explains Eileen Lawrence, Vice President, Sales and Marketing. James Vernon Hatch, senior advisor to the project, rescued many works by writers who, at the ends of their lives in the 1960s and 1970s, thought that no one would ever again be interested in their plays. Hatch gathered oral histories and archived original copies from these writers, when many believed that their works had no perceived value. Examples are the complete writings of Abram Hill, Buriel Clay, James Butcher, and Owen Dodson (who was recognized more as a poet and felt forgotten as a playwright).

Many of the plays in Black Drama are works about which scholars have heard rumors, but which have remained unpublished until now. The Zora Neale Hurston manuscripts were recently found by Library of Congress and reside there, and Alexander Street Press is publishing these plays for the first time in Black Drama. The collection includes works by key writers of the Harlem Renaissance & Federal Theater Project, such as Theodore Brown, Hughes Allison, Andrew Burris, and Augustus Smith. Scholars have heard about these writers’ plays, and now Alexander Street Press is publishing them for the first time.

Many of the writers are still living and quite advanced in years. Dr. Thomas Pawley, now in his eighties, wrote several of his plays when he was young and thought that much of this work would be forgotten. Dr. Ted Shine wrote throughout his life and is well regarded, but many of his works remained unpublished and unavailable until now. Black Drama makes it possible for the works of these living authors to come back into scholarship.

Black Drama is available through annual web subscription or one-time purchase of perpetual access. Contact Mary Siegel at siegel@alexanderstreet.com or 800-889-5937 ext. 4. Or visit us at http://alexanderstreet.com and click Black Drama on the home page.

Alexander Street Press, L.L.C., is an academic publisher of electronic full-text databases in the humanities and social sciences. Founded in June 2000, the company publishes collections in history, literature, women’s studies, sociology, ethnic and diversity studies, popular culture, film studies, the arts, and other areas. Alexander Street databases won the most recent “Best New Product” award from The Charleston Advisor. Alexander Street’s Semantic Indexing allows users to answer questions in ways previously impossible. Alexander Street Press is located in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Editors: For additional information on Alexander Street Press and its products, please contact Eileen Lawrence, vice president of sales and marketing, 800-889-5937, or lawrence@alexanderstreet.com, or visit http://alexanderstreet.com.