The papers were collected by Donald Oenslager, who wrote on stage and theater design and taught in the Yale School of Drama for over forty years. The first section of the collection contains Oenslager's correspondence concerning Appia. Letters between Oenslager and Edmond Appia, distant cousin of Adolphe and representative of the Fondation Adolphe Appia, document the purchase of the typescript carbons of Appia's essays which are found in the second section of the collection. Correspondence between Oenslager and Samuel J. Hume, an author on the theater and dealer in rare books on the subject in Berkeley, California, relates in part to the purchase of Appia manuscripts. The second section, Writings , includes over twenty essays by Appia, and an outline of La musique et la mise en scene together with an English translation of that work, based on the German version.
Most examples are typescript drafts.
The third section, Writings about Appia , contains over a dozen articles by such writers as Carl Niessen, Edmund Stadler, Carl Van Vechten, Jessica Davis Van Wyck, and Walther R. Volbach. Included in this section are two issues of theater magazines dedicated to the memory of Appia. The fourth section, Miscellaneous Papers , contains materials relating to Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, a Swiss education reformer with whom Appia collaborated, and photographs of Appia. Feb 52 Miscellaneous Papers n.d.