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Preface -- Time Line -- Journalism and Lectures 1915-1918. Introduction -- American press interviews and reports of lectures : extracts -- Backward children developed by Rhythm -- The promise of the American theatre -- The Eden theatre -- Address to Dalcroze Society : extract -- Letters. Introduction -- The atmosphere of war -- Friends and associates -- Women -- Things were ended between us -- Enlisted as a soldier -- Nation and war -- The military mind -- England -- Race, class and democracy -- My history plays -- My faith -- THinking about writing -- Aesthetic pleasures -- Love and sex -- Self -- When this fighting is over -- Contextual Essays. Archer Huntington's wife -- Mrs. Granville-Barker -- Sources. "The name of Harley Granville Barker is well known both in the theatre industry, where his plays continue to be performed, and in academic study of drama and theatre, especially Shakespeare studies. However, because almost no attention has been paid to an archive which the British Library purchased in the late 1990s, work published on him has been inaccurate about his beliefs, his most personal feelings, and the major career change in his life. This archive consists mainly of correspondence between Barker and Helen Huntington, whom he met in 1914 and who became his second wife in 1918. These letters tell us about the early years of their relationship as well as what they read, discussed, and planned. This book presents extended extracts from the Barker-Huntington correspondence together with unfamiliar short essays and some interviews which were published in American newspapers. These cover topics such as teh future of American theatre, uses of drama with children with learning difficulties, eurhythmics and the origins of theatre. Meticulously edited and fully annotated, the primary texts are accompanied by a pair of contextualising essays about Helen Huntington. The first looks at the private lives and crises of those involved in the break-up of Granville Barker's marriage to his first wife, Lillah McCarthy. Reconsidering McCarthy's actions, this essay also suggests that Huntington was abused by her husband, from whom Barker rescued her. A second essay addresses the portrayal of Helen Huntington as a theatre-hating woman who ruined Barker's caeer. In fact she was a regulare theatre-goer, a writer and Barker's eventual collaborator"--Back cover
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