Tom Stoppard | British writer | Britannica.com British writer Alternative Titles: Sir Tom Stoppard, Tomas Straussler Tom Stoppard Sir Noël Coward Tom Stoppard, original name Tomas Straussler, in full Sir Tom Stoppard (born July 3, 1937, Zlín , Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]), Czech-born British playwright whose work is marked by verbal brilliance, ingenious action, and structural dexterity . Stoppard’s father was working in Singapore in 1938/39. After the Japanese invasion, his father stayed on and was killed, but Stoppard’s mother and her two sons escaped to India, where in 1946 she married a British officer, Kenneth Stoppard. Soon afterward the family went to live in England. Tom Stoppard—he had assumed his stepfather’s surname—quit school and started his career as a journalist in Bristol in 1954. He began to write plays in 1960 after moving to London.

His first play , A Walk on the Water (1960), was televised in 1963; the stage version, with some additions and the new title Enter a Free Man, reached London in 1968. His play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1964–65) was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966. That same year his only novel , Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon, was published. His play was the greater success: it entered the repertory of Britain’s National Theatre in 1967 and rapidly became internationally renowned. The irony and brilliance of this work derive from Stoppard’s placing two minor characters of Shakespeare ’s Hamlet into the centre of the dramatic action. A number of successes followed.

Among the most-notable stage plays were The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978), Night and Day (1978), Undiscovered Country (1980, adapted from a play by Arthur Schnitzler ), and On the Razzle (1981, adapted from a play by Johann Nestroy ). The Real Thing (1982), Stoppard’s first romantic comedy, deals with art and reality and features a playwright as a protagonist. Arcadia, which juxtaposes 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century chaos theory and is set in a Derbyshire country house, premiered in 1993, and The Invention of Love, about A.E. Housman, was first staged in 1997. The trilogy The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage), first performed in 2002, explores the lives and debates of a circle of 19th-century Russian émigré intellectuals .

Rock ’n’ Roll (2006) jumps between England and Czechoslovakia during the period 1968–90. Stoppard wrote a number of radio plays, including In the Native State (1991), which was reworked as the stage play Indian Ink (1995). He also wrote a number of notable television plays, such as Professional Foul (1977). Among his early screenplays are those for The Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Despair (1978), and Brazil (1985), as well as for a film version (1990) of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that he also directed. In 1999 the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love (1998), cowritten by Stoppard and Marc Norman, won an Academy Award . Stoppard also adapted the French screenplay for the English-language film Vatel (2000), about a 17th-century chef, and wrote the screenplay for Enigma (2001), which chronicles the English effort to break the German Enigma code.

He later penned scripts for a lavish miniseries (2012) based on novelist Ford Madox Ford ’s tetralogy Parade’s End and for a film adaptation (2012) of Leo Tolstoy ’s Anna Karenina . Britannica Stories Author Review: Tom Stoppard | the starving artist the starving artist Devon Trevarrow Flaherty / October 29, 2013 Plays 5 (or Plays FIve), a compilation of five of Tom Stoppard plays, published by faber and faber in 1999. Also, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, by Tom Stoppard, from Grove Press, published first in 1966 and with an introduction in 2005. Note that I have recently reviewed Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead , Stoppard’s most famous work, as part of a study of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and that is why I took this diverting route into some of the further works of Stoppard. I also reviewed the incredible movie (directed by Stoppard), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead .

Stoppard is not your typical playwright, in career. He has exactly the type or career that I would love to have, in that he is never satisfied just sticking to one thing. His production includes not only many plays (and many celebrated plays, beginning with radio plays and expanding to the stage), but also screen plays (some original and some adaptations), movie direction, translation, and even acting, libretto, and a novel. It would take me an entire “semester,” as it were, to cover Stoppard in his entirety, hitting on all his best plays and watching his movies. Here are some of the most famous (far from comprehensive): Lord Malquist and Mr.

Moon (novel, 1966) “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” (play, 1966) “The Real Inspector Hound” (play, 1968) “Jumpers” (play, 1972) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (screenplay rewrite, 1989) Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (movie, 1990) Shakespeare In Love (screenplay, 1998) “The Coast of Utopia” (play trilogy, 2002) Parade’s End (adapted TV miniseries, 2012) Anna Karenina (adapted screenplay, 2012) Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright. His career and works have been applauded and revered since the 60s, and he continues to be an artistic force. He was knighted in 1997. Under his belt, he has an Academy Award and four Tonys, as well as many other awards.

He outperforms almost every other living dramatist, and in the words of Wikipedia, Stoppard’s “themes [include] human rights, censorship and political freedom… along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy.” He is also recognized as a comic and satirical master. Plays 5 or Plays Five: When deciding on a book of plays to read for Stoppard, I was confronted with many, but none with all his plays, and not one with his best or most famous. In other words, you just have to pick a random or chronological grouping of up to five of his plays and begin there. I really think a Complete Works or Best Of is much needed. So, somehow I ended up choosing from the definitive series of books (titled Plays 1, Plays 2, Plays 3, Plays 4, and Plays 5), the compilation Plays 5. I would have liked to also read “Travesties” and “Jumpers,” but my pocketbook could not afford two more books, nor could my reading schedule absorb it. Stoppard’s most lauded play from Plays 5 is “Arcadia,” and I have to whole-heartedly agree with that standing.

It is debatable which is better: “Arcadia” or “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.” (I emphatically vote the latter.) One of the best things about Stoppard as a playwright is his inventiveness. In “Arcadia,” the action takes place in the same house, 180 years apart, so Stoppard chooses not to change sets between scenes and props become part of the unfolding story on two levels. It is quite cool. Other than that, the play is enjoyable because of the many thoughts and one-liners. The play is ultimately about order and disorder and true knowledge versus conviction, and feature two generations of academics, artist, and scientists. The rest of the plays in Plays 5 range from almost great to pretty darn good. All of them include that Stoppard inventiveness, quick wit, and complicated meta-narrative (which went over my head more often than not, I am afraid). “The Real Thing” unfolds at first very straight-forwardly, then the reader (viewer) becomes confused, only to be pleasantly surprised by the revelation of a play-within-a-play.

From then on, the reader doesn’t know what to expect, and the plot twists and turns back on itself several times, making difficult scenes poignant. The theme is fidelity and infidelity, especially when coupled with fame. “Night and Day” is my least favorite in the book, partly because of its themes of colonialism and journalism, but also because Stoppard’s device of having a second “Ruth” character speak for her thoughts was–in my opinion–a complete flop. It was too random and convoluted, let alone confusing, to work well. Perhaps in the hands of a capable director… “Indian Ink” covers yet another favorite British topic, India and its relationship with England. Also included: artists. (See a theme? I’m not sure Stoppard ever writes about anything but the artists, rich, famous, or aristocratic.) Stoppard also used a device similar to that in “Arcadia,” where scenes move back and forth between the last months of the main character’s life and her sister’s telling of the story to a biographer, although these scenes do not take place in the same setting and props do change, at least sort of. The characters are interesting, but it lacks a compelling plot line.

“Hapgood,” I hate to say, is just too confusing. I think it is about twins, but there is something there below the surface that we are supposed to get. Actually, it reminded me a lot of “Fringe,” which is a J. J. Abrams TV show about alternate universes and double agents, so yeah, they have similarities. If I had ever understood what was going on or which character was whom, I believe the twists and turns would have been fun. Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon: From the plays, I went on to read Stoppard’s only novel, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon. As to whether or not I liked it, I am going to have to answer two times. One: no. It was just too crass and filled with sex and sexual innuendo and it also pokes fun at my religion. Two: yes. It is exactly the kind of fantastical story that I look for and enjoy, complete with twists and turns and fast-paced plot and interesting characters and a giant mess of strings that come banging together at the end to create a satisfying explosion. I am saddened by the fact that this novel has never received much attention or sales or awards.

As I often feel with Stoppard, I am likely missing a whole lot of satire wound up in his story, but what I do catch I find great fun. An awesome book, if you don’t mind crassness or religious satire, and especially if you are British. Just check out the other two reviews that exist on Amazon. They are so few but they are glowing. On the other hand, a quick look at GoodReads leads you to a hundred-person mash between disappointed fans and people–like me–who love it and wish he would write more novels. Movies: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Stoppard wrote the final draft of this screenplay, which just means that taste is… um… magnetic. In other words, I have liked Stoppard for much longer than I have realized. The Last Crusade is one of my most favorite movies of all time. I can’t imagine there are many of you who have not seen it. It is not high-minded or anything, but it is a truly classic adventure movie, the best of the trilogy. Be prepared for some gore. S hakespeare In Love (1998).

This movie has a lot of fans, and had a lot of buzz when it came to Oscar time in 1999. (It took some home.) As a teenage Shakespeare fan at the time, I recall being quite disappointed. According to IMDB, though, people who liked this movie also like Love Actually, About a Boy, and Sliding Doors, three of my other favorite movies. (They are all on my shelf, as you read.) Perhaps I should give this another view? Anna Karenina (2012). I already reviewed this in a month recap, so here is the old review: “This one was the opposite of Les Miserables in that it impressed me when I did not expect to be impressed. I was honestly expecting it to be sort of sordid, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked on the previews. So then why was I watching? In the mood for something sordid? I consider Anna Karenina, the book, to be like a Russian cousin to the Jane Austen-esque novels, and while I have enjoyed those over the years (and many of their movies), I have never been able to get through Anna (the novel). I seem to get bored reading Russian lit.

So I wanted to like it and to get a feel for the Karenina story. What I was happy to discover–contrary to where I thought the novel was headed when I have tried to read it–was that the movie did not simper around Anna’s liberation as a sexual being and a woman. Sure, she’s passionate and strong-willed and part of a restrictive society, but she is also selfish and stands in stark contrast to the calmer, more sacrificial love of Levin and Kitty. We aren’t convinced, in the end, that she is the best mom (understatement) and we also agree with Anna that her husband, the forgiver and loyalist, is the better person. Also… the movie is done so that you are acutely aware of the movie as creation; plenty of times the acting takes place in a theater set, characters passing between acts.

I’m not really sure why the director took this direction [I do now; Tom Stoppard wrote it], but it was beautiful and reminded me a lot of Baz Luhrman.” Stay tuned for reviews of Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford along with Stoppard’s TV adaptation, and also Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” which is supposed to be related in style and theme to Stoppard’s works. Share this: Tom Stoppard - Literature Literature Biography Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was born Tomás Straüssler on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. He grew up in Singapore and India during the Second World War and moved to England in 1946 with his mother and stepfather, his own father having been killed in Singapore. Educated at schools in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, he became a journalist working for the Western Daily Press (1954-8) and the Bristol Evening World (1958-60), and became theatre critic for Scene magazine in London (1962-3).

He began writing plays for radio and television, including The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964), A Walk on the Water, televised in 1963, and The Stand-Ins, later revised as The Real Inspector Hound (1968). Albert's Bridge (1968) was first broadcast by BBC Radio in 1967. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966. The play came to the attention of Kenneth Tynan, then working for the National Theatre, and it was produced at the National in 1967 and on Broadway in 1967, winning a Tony Award for Best Play (USA) in 1968. The Real Inspector Hound was first staged in 1968, followed by productions of Albert's Bridge and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank, both in 1969. His play Jumpers (1972) was staged at the National Theatre in 1972 and his adaptation of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba was first performed in the same year.

Travesties (1975) was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, transferring to New York in 1975 where it won a Tony Award for Best Play. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1976), was inspired by his friendship with Viktor Fainberg, who had been imprisoned in Czechoslovakia by the Soviets, and Stoppard began to speak out on behalf of dissidents including the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel, who had been charged with subversion. Professional Foul (1978) was written for Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience Year in 1977. On the Razzle (1982), adapted from Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich machen, was staged at the National Theatre in 1981, followed by The Real Thing (1982) in 1982. He was on the board of the National Theatre from 1989-2003.

His trilogy of plays set in 19th century Russia, The Coast of Utopia (2002), was first staged at the National Theatre in 2002. Tom Stoppard was knighted in 1997. He lives in London. His latest plays are Heroes (2005), and Rock n Roll (2006). He has written the screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum, and a new English version of Chekov's Ivanov (2008). Critical perspective Tom Stoppard is a deceptive dramatist. He is always written about as if he were an intellectual acrobat and dazzling word-spinner delighted by ideas and deficient in emotion. And it is perfectly true that he is unafraid to deal with subjects that would deter many dramatists; from metaphysics and quantum mechanics to moral philosophy and moon landings. But behind the intellectual high jinx there lurks an often passionate humanist whose writing betrays an increasing concern both with the abuse of freedom and the nature of love. Whatever Stoppard is, he is certainly not a cold fish.

The key to his work, both formally and intellectually, lies in the idea of collision: as he once told a New York Times interviewer, 'I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting myself.' After a peripatetic childhood (born in Czechoslovakia, he was raised in both Singapore and India) and an early career as a Bristol journalist, he gravitated naturally towards drama with its built-in opportunities for dialectic and debate. His early works were brief, ingenious radio dramas but in the mid-60s he sat down to write a substantial novel and play. He was convinced that the novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966) would make his name. In the event it was the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966 and a year later by the National Theatre, that earned him fame and fortune. Both works, however, clearly establish Stoppard's chosen territory.

The novel - a wild, macabre farce taking place at the time of Churchill's funeral - contains a serious debate about whether life fulfils a predetermined pattern or whether it is simply a series of random events. And the play is based on the favoured Stoppard pattern of collision: two minor figures from Shakespeare's tragedy, uncertain of their own identities and passing the time flipping coins and playing word-games, come up against the seemingly inexplicable public events that make up Hamlet. Owing a big debt to Becket and Pirandello as well as Shakespeare, the play nevertheless marked Stoppard out as a highly original voice. Nor was the play simply an erudite box of tricks: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's acceptance of death as a means of discovering their true identities remains emotionally touching. Stoppard's delight in the juxtaposition of, or collision between, two different worlds is a constant throughout his career. In his next stage-play, The Real Inspector Hound (1968), two theatre-critics disappear from their own cosily ordered world into the chaotic mystery of a country-house thriller and, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, end up dead.

But in Jumpers (1972), written for the National Theatre, Stoppard takes the idea of collision infinitely further. On the one hand we watch a moral philosopher, called George Moore married to an ex-musical comedy queen, wrestling in his study with a convoluted lecture on God: meanwhile, in the outer world, an academic gymnast is murdered, astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon and Britain is in the grip of an authoritarian Radical-Liberal government. It's a play in which Shavian debate interacts with showbiz razzle-dazzle but behind it, as always with Stoppard, lies a serious idea: the question of whether moral values are purely social constructs or stem from an absolute divinity. Stoppard's ability to choreograph ideas was further confirmed by Travesties (1975). Starting from the historical fact that Lenin, James Joyce and the Dadaist Tristan Tzara were all in Zurich at the same time in 1917, Stoppard explores both the nature of political and artistic revolution and the fallibility of memory: characters and events are all shakily recollected by a minor consular official, Henry Carr.

Although immensely entertaining, the play suffers from its apparent endorsement of a Wildean belief in art for art's sake while ignoring Wilde's own subversive socialism. But any idea that Stoppard was simply a detached, apolitical stylist was knocked firmly on the head by two works that followed each other closely in 1977. One, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978) dealing with the incarceration in Soviet madhouses of perfectly sane dissidents, was a witty assault on institutional evil. The other, Professional Foul (1978), was written for television and showed Stoppard tackling moral and political issues with absolute clarity: it dealt with a Cambridge Professor who visits Prague to see a football match and deliver a lecture on 'Ethical Fictions as Ethical Foundations' only to find himself confronting the real world of political persecution and learning that there is a clear distinction between right and wrong. These two plays showed Stoppard's passionate concern with human rights.

And The Real Thing (1982), arguably his best play, proved that he could write about the pain of adultery and the excitement of love without sacrificing one iota of his wit and intelligence: along with Harold Pinter's Betrayal and Peter Nichols's Passion Play, it is part of a remarkable triptych of plays by middle-aged British dramatists on the theme of deception. What makes Stoppard's play special is that, partly because the hero is a successful writer with several of the dramatist's own characteristics, it embraces so many other themes: not least the relativity of perception and the difficulty of deciding what 'the real thing' actually is in art, life and politics. The play is structurally intricate, philosophically challenging and emotionally affecting in its portrayal of a brain-box hero who gains self-knowledge through suffering. Having demonstrated both his moral commitment and ability to deal with quotidian passions, Stoppard increasingly devoted himself to adaptations (of work by Schnitzler, Molnar and Havel) film scripts (Brazil) and even opera libretti.

His next major play, Hapgood (1988), enjoyed mixed fortunes: many found its mixture of quantum physics, espionage melodrama and romantic comedy confusing, though quite clearly the play was about the absence of fixity in human affairs. But In the Native State (1991) was a fine radio play, later adapted for the stage as Indian Ink, about the collision between a free-spirited English female poet and the India of the 1930s. And Arcadia (1993) dazzlingly showed Stoppard's return to theatrical form. Two time-periods and worlds - a stately country house in 1809 and 1989 - were juxtaposed and the whole play revolved around a series of antitheses: classicism and romanticism, art and nature, order and chaos, determinism and free will. But there was also something inexplicably moving about the eventual merger of the play's two periods and about the play's heroine, a 13-year old mathematical genius, dying a premature death.

Stoppard's capacity to touch the heart was even more apparent in The Invention of Love (1997) where the deceased poet-scholar, A. E. Housman, encounters his younger self and realises he is powerless to affect the course of his uncertain and emotionally unfulfilled life. In all these later works Stoppard displays his characteristic blend of erudition, wit and playfulness. What has become clear, however, is that he is a very passionate writer filled with a fear of cosmic disorder, hungry for some kind of secure, post-Christian value-system and, as T. S. Eliot said of John Webster, 'much possessed by death.' Michael Billington, 2002 Tom Stoppard Analysis - eNotes.com Tom Stoppard Analysis link Link In addition to composing plays and occasionally adapting the dramas of others, Tom Stoppard has written several short stories, radio plays, teleplays, screenplays, and the novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon (1966). He prides himself on his versatility, eschewing the notion of the dedicated author plowing a lonely furrow and sacrificing almost all other concerns on the altar of high art.

Instead, as he told an interviewer in 1976: I’ve got a weakness . . . for rather shallow people who knock off a telly play and write a rather good novel and . . . interview Castro and write a good poem and a bad poem and . . . every five years do a really good piece of work as well. That sort of eclectic, trivial person who’s very gifted. Stoppard’s novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon is “rather good.” It is an exuberant farce that uses a collage of literary styles and allusions ranging from those of Joseph Conrad to Oscar Wilde, and from James Joyce to T. S. Eliot. Lord Malquist is a modern-day earl who seeks to sustain the dandyish refinements of his eighteenth century ancestors. His hired diarist, Mr. Moon, is a pathetically ineffectual man obsessively nursing a homemade bomb. Where the imperious and selfish Malquist anticipates such later dramatic characters as Sir Archibald Jumper of Jumpers, the confused, Prufrockian Moon models for the rebuffs experienced by the same text’s George Moore.

Malquist sums up what seems to be the novel’s thesis when he declares, “since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.” More Content: Analysis (hide) link Link Tom Stoppard’s dramaturgy has a uniquely wide appeal in the contemporary theater because he often manages to combine comedy with social concern, farce with moral philosophy, and sometimes absurdism with naturalism. He and Harold Pinter, beginning in the 1960’s, came to be considered the English-speaking world’s leading playwrights. Both owe a large debt to Samuel Beckett and exhibit a willingness to experiment with theatrical forms. Pinter’s sparse language, pauses, and silences, however, contrast sharply with Stoppard’s free-flowing fountains of verbal play and display. Moreover, Pinter’s carefully guarded characters and often baffling, static plots could not differ more from Stoppard’s accessible people and vividly detailed, fast-paced action sequences. His plays have won Tony and Olivier awards. The film of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival in 1990.

In 1999 Shakespeare in Love, for which he wrote the screenplay, won seven Academy awards and three Golden Globes. In 1997 Stoppard became the first British playwright to be knighted since Terence Rattigan. Stoppard’s work is postmodernist in its self-conscious artfulness and intricate game playing. He loves to confound his audience with abrupt shifts of time and convention, unreliable narrations, and surprising twists of plot. His eclectic borrowings fuse high and low culture, invading the texts of William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Wilde, Joyce, Eliot, and many more to combine them with “whodunit” thrillers, journalistic techniques, music-hall comedies, and popular love songs. The leading debate among Stoppard’s critics is whether his works are too frivolous and waggish to be taken seriously and whether, despite his eye for striking situations and ear for witty talk, he is no more than an ingenious but juvenile sprinter, too short-winded to complete the potential of his promising situations. His supporters insist that Stoppard is able to fuse his fertile comic sense with intellectual substance.

They find his vision of life mature and profound as he dramatizes such concerns as free will versus fate (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), moral philosophy (Jumpers), art versus politics (Travesties), totalitarianism (Every Good Boy Deserves Favour), the press’s freedoms and responsibilities (Night and Day), and married love (The Real Thing). They assert that Stoppard’s career has shown an increasing commitment to ethical humanism and freedom of conscience while his dramatic craft has forged a rare compact between high comedy and the drama of ideas. link Link What thematic concerns and stage techniques seem to run throughout Tom Stoppard’s career, from his earlier works, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, to The Coast of Utopia? List and briefly describe several concerns and techniques. How has Stoppard’s work evolved and changed? List characteristics that make The Coast of Utopia unique, even for Stoppard’s canon. In what ways is Stoppard an outsider in British society, both because of his origins and because of the kinds of plays he has chosen to write?

Stoppard’s plays are both connected to real, historical events and written in a style that is at the opposite extreme from documentary and realistic depiction of characters and events. Explain how historical reality and staginess show up in his plays. Stoppard’s approach might be called “the comedy of serious ideas.” What are these ideas? How are they made comic? A signature feature of Stoppard’s plays is their language, often evident in spectacular speeches meant to dazzle the audience by their rapid sequence of different ideas and their engaging sound. Choose a speech or two and explore how Stoppard tries to dazzle. Whether minimal or elaborate, the staging Stoppard describes for his plays is never conventional. Describe the staging that he specifies for one or two plays. What makes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead such a fascinating commentary on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (pr. c. 1600-1601, pb. 1603)? How is it both familiar and strange, old-fashioned, and avant-garde?

Tom Stoppard Biography - life, family, children, name, history, school, mother, son, information, born, movie Tom Stoppard Biography Zlin, Czechoslovakia Czech-born English playwright One of England's most important playwrights, Czechoslovakian-born Tom Stoppard is popular in the United States as well. His two great stage successes were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Thing, and he reached an even wider audience—and won an Academy Award—for his screenplay for the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love. Early life and career The second son of a doctor for the Bata shoe manufacturing company, Thomas Straussler (Stoppard) was born on July 3, 1937, in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. The family fell victim to the Nazi racial laws, a wide-ranging set of laws enforced by Germany's radical Nazi Army that were aimed at severely restricting the freedoms of Jews and other minorities. Since there was "Jewish blood" in the family, his father was transferred to Singapore in 1939, taking the family with him.

When the Japanese invaded that city in 1942, Thomas's mother fled with her children to India. Dr. Straussler stayed behind and was later killed. Thomas attended an American boarding school in Darjeeling, India. In 1946 his mother married Kenneth Stoppard, a British army major, and both of her sons took his name. The Stoppards moved to Bristol, England, where Thomas's stepfather worked in the machine tool industry. Thomas continued his education at a preparatory school in Yorkshire, England. At age seventeen Thomas felt that he had had enough schooling. He became first a reporter and then a critic for the Western Daily Press of Bristol, England, from 1954 to 1958. He left the Press and worked as a reporter for the Evening World, also in Bristol, from 1958 to 1960. Stoppard then worked as a freelance reporter from 1960 to 1963. During these years he experimented with writing short stories and short plays. In 1962 he moved to London, England, in order to be closer to the center of the publishing and theatrical worlds in the United Kingdom.

The playwright Stoppard's first radio plays for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), The Dissolution of Dominic Boot and M Is for Moon Among Other Things, aired in 1964. Two more, Albert's Bridge and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank, followed in 1965. His first television play, A Separate Peace, appeared the next year, as did his only novel, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, and the stage play that established his reputation Tom Stoppard. . as a playwright, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The year 1968 saw another television play, Neutral Ground, and two short works for the theater, Enter a Free Man and The Real Inspector Hound. In 1970 Stoppard returned to the BBC with the two radio plays, Artist Descending a Staircase and Where Are They Now. He also authored the television plays The Engagement and Experiment in Television as well as the stage work After Magritte. It was about this time that Stoppard became acquainted with Ed Berman from New York City's Off-Off-Broadway. Berman was attempting to establish an alternative theater in London.

For him Stoppard composed Dogg's Our Pet, which was produced in 1971 at the Almost Free Theater. In 1972 Stoppard had presented Jumpers, which begins with circus acts and evolves into religious and moral philosophy (the study of knowledge). Although critics reacted warmly to the play, Jumpers did not enjoy the same praise that had greeted Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Theater critic Stanley Kauffmann labeled it "fake, structurally and thematically," while another critic, John Simon, wrote that "there is even something arrogant about trying to convert the history of Western culture into a series of blackout sketches, which is very nearly what Jumpers is up to." Two years later Stoppard produced his third major work, Travesties.

It is based on the coincidence that Russian exile politician Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–1941), and the father of the French Dadaist movement in literature and art, Tristan Tzara (1896–1963), were all in Zurich, Switzerland, at times during World War I (1914–18; when German-led forces pushed for European domination). It is assumed that they never met in reality, but their interaction in Stoppard's play asks the question of what defines art. The author's conclusion seems to be that its sole function is to make the meaninglessness (complete emptiness) of life more bearable. Later works In 1977 Stoppard offered Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a remarkable achievement performed for the first time at the Royal Festival Hall by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the one hundred-piece London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andre Previn (1929–). Brought to the United States, it was presented at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City with an eighty-one-piece orchestra.

Stoppard summed up his life's work as an attempt to "make serious points by flinging a custard pie around the stage for a couple of hours." Some of his serious points must have been heard in 1999, when he shared the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with Marc Norman for their work on the movie Shakespeare in Love. The movie also won the award for Best Picture of the year. For More Information Cahn, Victor L. Beyond Absurdity: The Plays of Tom Stoppard. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1979. Dean, Joan Fitzpatrick. Tom Stoppard: Comedy as a Moral Matrix. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981. Gussow, Mel, ed. Conversations with Stoppard. New York: Limelight Editions, 1995. Londre, Felicia Hardison. Tom Stoppard. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Company, 1981. Nadel, Ira Bruce. Tom Stoppard: A Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

User Contributions: Nine Prolific Writers Who Only Wrote One Novel | Cassava Films the list of 9 for August 13, 2015 Nine Prolific Writers Who Only Wrote One Novel Keyword(s): celebrities , misc. Thanks to this year's surprise publication of Harper Lee's long-lost Go Set a Watchman, Lee is no longer a member of that elite group known as "Famous Authors Who Only Wrote One Novel". The Internet is filled with lists about these people, and you'll see the same names over again: Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights), Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind), Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar), etc. But most of those writers were one-hit wonders, famous because of those solitary novels. For my list, I chose writers better known for their plays, short stories, and/or poetry. In many cases, their sole published novels are mere footnotes in their careers, and remain little-known to the general public. ANTON CHEKHOV: The Shooting Party, published 1884-85.

The great Russian playwright – who, interestingly, only wrote six full-length plays (four of them classics) – actually completed this mystery novel before writing for the stage. OSCAR WILDE: The Picture of Dorian Gray, published 1890. Surely you've heard of Wilde's only novel, which often pops up on the aforementioned lists. Like Chekhov, Wilde authored his book after establishing himself as a writer of prose but before becoming a playwright. EDGAR ALLAN POE: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published 1838. Often referred to as just plain Arthur Gordon Pym, Poe's lone novel came out some six years after he began writing short stories, and eleven after he wrote his first major poem Tamerlane, yet it predates all of his best-known work (The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, etc.). WALT WHITMAN: Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times, published 1842. This "temperance novel", a warning to readers to abstain from alcohol, was dismissed by its own author as "damned rot".

Whitman, who was 23 when Franklin Evans was published, also claimed to have only taken three days to write it – while drunk. Leaves of Grass came out 13 years later. HAROLD PINTER: The Dwarfs, written 1950, published 1992. Once again, as with Chekhov and Wilde, the austere English playwright tried his hand at the novel before giving up and turning his attentions toward the stage. He later adapted the semi-autobiographical The Dwarfs into a radio play, and another writer (Kerry Lee Crabbe) turned it into a never-filmed screenplay in 1996, and then finally into a stage play! ARTHUR MILLER: Focus, published 1945. History keeps repeating himself: playwright/screenwriter Miller already had a number of stage works under his belt by the time he published this novel about antisemitism in 1940s New York, but his best-known plays – All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible – were yet to come. TOM STOPPARD: Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, published 1966.

According to Britain's The Guardian, playwright/screenwriter Stoppard's sole novel initially sold just 688 copies – many of them, inexplicably, in Venezuela. Also that year, Stoppard wrote the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and the rest is history. ATHOL FUGARD: Tsotsi, published 1980. What is it with playwrights and their one-and-done novels? (Note: Tennessee Williams and David Mamet each wrote two.) Tsotsi was published deep into the South African playwright's career: The Island won the Tony in 1975; "Master Harold" ...and the Boys would debut in 1982. Tsotsi itself was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 2006. KATHERINE ANNE PORTER: Ship of Fools, published 1962. Finally, a female writer – and a non-playwright. Porter's name isn't so well-known today, but as a Pulitzer Prize-winning short story author, she was huge in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

When Ship of Fools was published, after the 72-year-old Porter had reportedly worked on it for 22 years(!), her legions of fans made it the bestselling novel of the year. It became a prestige picture in 1965 and won a couple of Oscars. Before I close this list, I should also mention Gwendolyn Brooks, Emma Lazarus, Mikhail Lermontov, Spike Milligan, and Carl Sagan as other prolific scribes who only published one novel.

Tom Stoppard: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center Creator: Tom Stoppard Papers 1939-2000 (bulk 1970-2000) Dates: 149 document cases, 9 oversize boxes, 9 oversize folders, 10 galley folders (62 linear feet) Abstract: The papers of this British playwright consist of typescript and handwritten drafts, revision pages, outlines, and notes; production material, including cast lists, set drawings, schedules, and photographs; theatre programs; posters; advertisements; clippings; page and galley proofs; dust jackets; correspondence; legal documents and financial papers, including passports, contracts, and royalty and account statements; itineraries; appointment books and diary sheets; photographs; sheet music; sound recordings; a scrapbook; artwork; minutes of meetings; and publications.

Call Number: Acquisition Purchases and gifts, 1991-2000 Processed by Processed by Katherine Mosley, 1993-2000 Repository: : Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin Playwright Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, on July 3, 1937. However, he lived in Czechoslovakia only until 1939, when his family moved to Singapore. Stoppard, his mother, and his older brother were evacuated to India shortly before the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1941; his father, Eugene Straussler, remained behind and was killed. In 1946, Stoppard's mother, Martha, married British army officer Kenneth Stoppard and the family moved to England, eventually settling in Bristol. Stoppard left school at the age of seventeen and began working as a journalist, first with the Western Daily Press (1954-58) and then with the Bristol Evening World (1958-60).

Having developed a specialization in film and theatre criticism, in 1960 Stoppard became a free-lance journalist, writing critical articles and, for the Daily Press, two pseudonymous weekly columns. By the end of the year, he had completed his first full-length play, A Walk on the Water (later produced on stage in 1968 as Enter a Free Man), and acquired an agent, Kenneth Ewing of Fraser and Dunlop Scripts. He also wrote a short piece, The Gamblers, which was eventually performed by the University of Bristol drama department in 1965. Stoppard has referred to this as his "first" play in that he claims A Walk on the Water was an unoriginal composite of several plays he admired. Over the next few years, Stoppard wrote various works for radio, television, and the theatre. Among these were "M" Is for Moon among Other Things (1964), A Separate Peace (1966), and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966).

A Walk on the Water had been broadcast on ITV Television in 1963 and on BBC-TV in 1964, and Stoppard wrote many episodes of the radio serial A Student's Diary: An Arab in London (1966-67). In addition, three short stories were published by Faber and Faber in the anthology, Introduction 2: Stories by New Writers (1964). From September 1962 until April 1963, Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic for Scene, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and under the pseudonym William Boot (taken from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop). In 1963, he began writing his only novel, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon. The names Boot and Moon recur in many of Stoppard's works, generally with Boot being a character who makes things happen and Moon being a character to whom things happen. While participating in a colloquium sponsored by the Ford Foundation in Berlin in 1964, Stoppard wrote a one-act play that later became Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

The play, which focuses on two minor characters from Hamlet, examines the ideas of fate and free will. In August 1966, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was performed by Oxford University students as part of the Edinburgh Festival fringe, and, at the same time, Stoppard's only novel was published; to Stoppard's surprise, it was the play that succeeded, establishing his reputation as a playwright. When the play, having caught the attention of Kenneth Tynan, was performed by the prestigious National Theatre Company at the Old Vic in London in 1967, it received immediate and widespread acclaim. Stoppard, at age 29, was a major success. Of Stoppard's plays written over the next ten years, Jumpers, produced in 1972, and Travesties, produced in 1974, are among the best known. Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land (1976) was written for Ed Berman, founder of the Inter-Action community arts organization, on the occasion of his being granted British citizenship.

By 1977, Stoppard had become concerned with human rights issues, in particular with the situation of political dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In February 1977, he visited Russia with a member of Amnesty International. In June, Stoppard met Vladimir Bukovsky in London and traveled to Czechoslovakia, where he met Václav Havel. Stoppard became involved with Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, and the Committee against Psychiatric Abuse and wrote various newspaper articles and letters about human rights. He organized a Roll Call, or reading of names of Soviet refuseniks, at the National Theatre in 1986. Stoppard's political concerns surfaced in his work. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977) was written at the request of André Previn and was inspired by a meeting with Russian exile Viktor Fainberg. The play, about a political dissident confined to a Soviet mental hospital, is accompanied by an orchestra using a musical score composed by Previn.

Professional Foul is a television play that Stoppard wrote over a period of three weeks as a contribution to Amnesty International's declaration of 1977 as Prisoner of Conscience Year. Subsequent major stage plays by Stoppard include Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Hapgood (1988), Arcadia (1993), Indian Ink (1995), which was based upon his radio play In the Native State (1991), and Invention of Love (1997). In addition to his original stage plays, Stoppard has written original screenplays, teleplays, and radio plays, as well as adaptations for the stage and screen. His screenplay of Brazil, coauthored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985; Shakespeare in Love, a screenplay co-written with Marc Norman, won that award in 1999. Other well-known screenplays by Stoppard include Empire of the Sun (1987, adapted from the novel by J. G.

Ballard), The Russia House (1989, adapted from the novel by John le Carré), and Billy Bathgate (1991, adapted from the novel by E. L. Doctorow), as well as a film version of his own Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1991) that won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Stoppard also sometimes reads and contributes to scripts by other writers for directors Kathleen Kennedy, Mike Nichols, and Steven Spielberg. Among teleplays by Stoppard, the best known is Squaring the Circle: Poland, 1980-81, a fictional documentary about the history of Solidarity. The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964), Stoppard's first radio play, was the basis for his teleplay The Engagement (1970). Albert's Bridge, produced by the BBC in 1967, won the Prix Italia. Other successful radio plays by Stoppard include Artist Descending a Staircase (1972), The Dog It Was That Died (1982), and In the Native State (1991).

Tom Stoppard has established an international reputation as a writer of "serious comedy"; his plays are plays of ideas that deal with philosophical issues, yet he combines the philosophical ideas he presents with verbal wit and visual humor. His linguistic complexity, with its puns, jokes, innuendo, and other wordplay, is a chief characteristic of his work. In recognition of his achievements, Stoppard was knighted in 1997. Stoppard has been married twice, to Jose Ingle (1965-72), a nurse, and to Miriam Moore-Robinson (1972-92), the head of a pharmaceutical company, and he has two sons from each marriage. More information about Stoppard and his work may be found in Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, vol. 39 (1993); Dictionary of Literary Biography, vols. 13 (1982) and 233 (2001); "Ambushes for the Audience: Towards a High Comedy of Ideas" in Theatre Quarterly (vol. 4, no.

14, 1974); "Profiles: Withdrawing with Style from the Chaos," by Kenneth Tynan in the New Yorker (19 December 1977); and "Tom Stoppard: His Life and Career Before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," by John Fleming in The Library Chronicle, vol. 26, no. 3 (1996). The Stoppard papers consist of typescript and holograph drafts, revision pages, outlines, and notes; production material, including cast lists, set drawings, schedules, and photographs; theatre programs; posters; advertisements; clippings; page and galley proofs; dust jackets; correspondence; legal documents and financial papers, including passports, contracts, and royalty and account statements; itineraries; appointment books and diary sheets; photographs; sheet music; sound recordings; a scrapbook; certificates; artwork; minutes of meetings; and publications, all ranging in date from 1939 to 2000, but primarily from 1970 to 2000.

The material is organized in five series: Works (1962-2000, nd, 114.5 boxes), Works about Stoppard (1974-81, nd, 2.5 boxes), Correspondence (1954-93, 21.5 boxes), Legal and Personal Material (1944, 1966-72, 1987, nd, 8 boxes) and Works by Other Authors (1975-78, nd, 2.5 boxes). Nearly all of Stoppard's major plays, screenplays, teleplays, and radio plays are represented in some form, along with many of his lesser-known works and some that were never produced. Stoppard's short stories are not well documented in the collection, although his only novel, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, is represented. For many works, materials from first or early drafts through various revisions, production, further revisions, and publication are present, reflecting Stoppard's practice of rewriting passages of his work continuously. Many of the typescripts are the result of Stoppard's dictation to a typist via cassette tape.

Stoppard's revision process continues even after a play has begun production and been published. Page proofs, galleys, and typesetting copy typescripts show changes made in subsequent editions after the initial publication of a work. For many of the works represented in the collection, Stoppard has maintained correspondence files, including production files and fan mail, separate from his general correspondence files, although similar materials may be found in both locations. Correspondence filed under a title usually consists of letters from people involved in various phases of a production, or from people praising or commenting upon the work. Reviews and articles about a work accompany the manuscripts, and are located under that title. When Stoppard collaborates with other writers, he works with them on a sequential basis rather than concurrently, and his amount of involvement varies by situation. Stoppard often is involved in film projects anonymously. For example, he often provides input on scripts sent to him by Stephen Spielberg, Mike Nichols, and Kathleen Kennedy. Stoppard's career as a journalist is not as well documented in the collection as his playwriting career. However, through the years Stoppard has continued to write occasional pieces for various periodicals, and many of those are present.

Folders of reviews and articles by Stoppard, some accompanied by letters from editors, are located at the end of the Works series. Additional articles by Stoppard about political issues are located in his "Russia File" in the Correspondence series. Most correspondence from editors of periodicals is housed with the general correspondence. Correspondence in the collection relates almost exclusively to Stoppard's career rather than to his personal life. Most of the correspondence is letters from people involved in productions of his plays, as well as translators, journalists, periodical editors, fellow playwrights, and admirers of his work. Nearly all of the letters have brief notations, made mainly by Stoppard and his secretary Jacky Matthews, recording any responses. Photocopies of some outgoing letters, usually dictated by Stoppard to his secretary, are housed with the incoming correspondence. Of particular interest is Stoppard's correspondence with Anthony C. H. Smith; covering an approximate 30-year span, these letters trace Stoppard's writing career from its beginning. Letters from Stoppard's agent, Kenneth Ewing, cover the years 1962-87 and also follow the rise of Stoppard's career.

Correspondence from Faber and Faber, Stoppard's primary publisher, discusses publication of Stoppard's books and includes printed dust jackets. Other significant correspondents include Ed Berman, Dirk Bogarde, Noël, Carr, Michael Codron, Guy Dumur, Lady Antonia Fraser, Michael Frayn, David Hare, Glynn Boyd Harte, Michael Horovitz, Ilya Levin, Bryan Magee, Trevor Nunn, Laurence Olivier, Harold Pinter, Ned Sherrin, and Kenneth Tynan. All correspondents in the Stoppard collection may be found in the Index of Correspondents. Stoppard's interest in human rights issues is reflected throughout the collection. Correspondence with many human rights organizations, files on Czechoslovakia and Russia, and material from his work organizing the Roll Call at the National Theatre reveal the extent of his involvement in these issues. Through his contacts with political dissidents, Stoppard became friends with Czechoslovakian playwright and politician Václav Havel. Correspondence with and about Havel, copies of his works, and material from Stoppard's translation of Havel's Largo Desolato were originally grouped together.

The correspondence has been separated and added to the Correspondence series, while Largo Desolato material has been housed with other works by Stoppard. Translations of Havel's The Beggar's Opera and The Conspirators are located in the Works by Other Authors series, along with works by Christopher Figg, Tomás Gartland, Tony Harrison, Vladimir J. Konecni, David Mamet, James Saunders, Peter Shaffer, Anthony C. H. Smith, Stephen Sondheim, and others. Few original materials relating to Stoppard's personal life are present in the collection, although some letters to his parents, photocopies of marriage, divorce, and birth certificates, memorabilia, and photographs are present. The collection does provide information about Stoppard's interests in cricket, chess, fishing, and other subjects. For example, Harold Pinter arranged cricket matches with Stoppard through correspondence, while Anthony Smith, his wife, and Stoppard used their letters to each other to play chess. Similarly, typescript and printed copies of interviews, Stoppard's responses to various requests, and correspondence about production disputes provide insights into Stoppard's character and personality.

Stoppard's interest in Ernest Hemingway, as well as his ability to form friendships quickly, can be seen in correspondence with Joan St. C. Crane of the University of Virginia, Carol (Mrs. Patrick) Hemingway, and Margie (Mrs. Louis Henry) Cohn of House of Books. Additions to the collection are expected. Other manuscripts relating to Stoppard at the HRC may be found in the Gordon Dickerson, David Hare, Francis Henry King, London Magazine, Harold Pinter, and James Saunders papers.

The following items have been removed from the collection and housed with the Center's Personal Effects holdings: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour needlepoint, nd Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ball and cup, "Zagreb 1990" Silver cricket bat charm, with stone inlays and engraved on the back: "Tom from Henry & Annie New York 5-1-84 Keep nudging..." Silver airplane tie clip Ivory letter-opener in the form of a cricket bat Fishing flies attached to label "777W72 Gareth & Keeyard "(?) Silver skiing medallion "Offert Par Les Skis Rossignol" (in box) White t-shirt with purple "Playbill Lincoln Center Theater Hapgood" logo Glass paperweight, "The First New York International Festival of the Arts June 11-July 11, 1988 Music, Dance, Theatre, Film and Television of the 20th Century" Framed cartoon by "Marc," captioned "He's deeply depressed-he got a brilliant review in the Sunday Times," Nov. 1978 Miniature Liberty Bell "presented to Stoppard by Mayor Edward G.

Rendell, City of Philadelphia, February 7, 1996" Presentation key engraved "Terry Hands," in pouch inscribed "Taormina Arte" Graduation hood for honorary degree bestowed by the University of York, with accompanying letter from robe makers Ede and Ravenscroft, 1984 Antoinette Perry award for The Real Thing, 1984 International Film & Television Festival of New York award, 1984 (medallion, in box) Drama Desk Award, "1983 1984 Outstanding New Play The Real Thing By Tom Stoppard" (two metal plates mounted on wooden blocks) Lincoln Center Theater "Joan Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity Tom Stoppard Hapgood 1995 Arcadia " (bronze award in box) Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for Distinguished Achievement, "1997 Writing, Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum" (plaque) Las Vegas Film Critics Society's 1998 Sierra Award to: "Tom Stoppard, Best Screenplay Shakespeare in Love " (plaque) Broadcasting Press Guild Television Awards "197

7 Best Single Play Professional Foul by Tom Stoppard, Produced by Mark Shivas, Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for BBC-2" (framed award certificate) "The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Certificate of Award The Council hereby certifies that Tom Stoppard won the British Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement During 1977 in the Category Best Script Presented at the Wembley Conference Centre, May 16 1978" (framed certificate) "Nomination Antoinette Perry Award Best Play Arcadia, Author: Tom Stoppard, Producer: Lincoln Center Theater, André Bishop, Bernard Gersten, 1994-1995, The American Theatre Wing, Inc.

and The League of American Theaters and Producers, Inc." (framed certificate) University of London Doctor of Literature honorary degree certificate, 9 June 1982, program of the proceedings, and text of introductory speech (all in embossed degree holder tube) Brunel University honorary degree certificate, 18 Dec. 1979, and text of introductory speech (in embossed degree holder tube) "Oh! Look what I've got on my plate!" ceramic plate painted with titles of early works by Stoppard, [ca. 1977] The following have been removed from the collection and are housed with the Center's film holdings: Thirteen "Master" Beta videotapes of the Roll Call at the National Theatre, 1986 Six audio tape reels of the Roll Call at the National Theatre, 1986 VHS videotape of the University of Hull degree conferment, 1998 VHS videotape of the University of York honorary degree conferment, 1984 Fragments of film showing the making of the film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, [1990] Three original watercolors of Victorian postcards, ca.

1898, have been removed from the collection and housed with the Center's Art Collection. One is labeled "Isle of Wight" by "John Renage" A bust of Stoppard by Alan Thornhill is on display in the Center's Reading Room. In addition, printed editions of Stoppard's works in a variety of languages have been removed from the collection and are cataloged with the Center's book holdings, as is a publication about Costas Tsoclis' "Ark" project that had accompanied correspondence regarding that project. Note to Researchers This finding aid for the Stoppard papers is a conflation of the five finding aids that were created for the original collection received in 1991 and 1993, and for four accretions that were described separately, received in 1994-1996, and 1998-1999. Materials added to the collection over time have not been physically interfiled for the most part, but the series descriptions and folder list group materials relating to a specific work or topic regardless of when they were received by the Center.

Due to size, this inventory has been divided into two separate units which can be accessed by clicking on the highlighted text below: Tom Stoppard Papers--Series descriptions and Series I. through Series II. [Part I] [This page]

Question: """Lord Malquist and Mr Moon"" is the only novel written by which famous British playwright?"
Answer: TOM STOPPARD