The Europeans on Broadway

This essay examines the material in an uncatalogued archive at Harvard’s Houghton Library regarding the 1957 Broadway production of Eugenia, based on Henry James’s The Europeans and starring Tallulah Bankhead. The archive includes letters to and from directors, actors, and producers; investors’ correspondence; publicity materials; financial records; two different scripts of Eugenia; playbills and clippings. Together they give a detailed picture of the difficulties of bringing James to the stage and suggest as well that there is further work to be done on the relationships between author, actress, and audience in James’s life and writings.