Philbrick, Norman D.

Biographical Note

This collection was donated in conjunction with the Geraldine Womack and Norman D. Philbrick Library of Dramatic Literature and Theatre History, which is also housed in Special Collections. Born on April 30, 1913 in Forth Wayne, Indiana, Norman Douglas Philbrick earned his A.B. from Pomona in 1935, M.A. from Stanford University in 1942, and Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1949. He married Alice Geraldine Womack in 1941, and they had four children: Mary, Anne, Robert, and Virginia.

During Philbrick's lifetime he held posts including the executive head of the Stanford University Department of Speech and Drama, president of the American Theatre Association, faculty positions at Pomona and Scripps Colleges, was a member of the Board of Trustees of Pomona College, and taught at the Pasadena Playhouse.

In 1941 Philbrick began collecting what would eventually become one of the major research collections on the history of English, American, and, to a lesser extent, French drama of the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries, and continued until his death on January 25, 1987.