Hoffman, Richard

American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Brooklyn-based theater collector and book dealer Richard Hoffman built a number of literary collections around American playwrights over a period of many years. Hoffman has said that he entered the United States Army in the 1950s as an actor and left as a writer. His military experience led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama. After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City University of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill fellowship for playwriting. He also began to seriously collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

American playwright Lorainne Hansberry (1930-1965) was born in Chicago, Illinois. She studied drama and stage design at the University of Wisconsin from 1948 to 1950 and then moved to New York to write for the Freedom newspaper. She was politically active in the Civil Rights movement by promoting social change and speaking against the oppression of African-Americans. In 1953, she married Robert Nemiroff, an aspiring writer whom she met on a picket line at New York University. Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun , opened on Broadway in 1959 and won the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award, making her the youngest American, the first woman, and the first African-American to win the award.

In 1960, Hansberry wrote two screenplays of A Raisin in the Sun that were not produced without significant alteration because they were deemed controversial. Her other plays include The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, which opened on Broadway in 1964, Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers?, all published posthumously in 1972 under the title Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry.

In 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced, though they remained close and he became her literary executor when she succumbed to cancer in January 1965.

From the guide to the Richard Hoffman - Lorraine Hansberry collection, 1959-1986, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)

Brooklyn-based theater collector and book dealer Richard Hoffman built a number of literary collections around American playwrights over a period of many years. Hoffman has said that he entered the United States Army in the 1950s as an actor and left as a writer. His military experience led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama. After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City University of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill fellowship for playwriting. He also began to seriously collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

American playwright August Wilson (1945-2005) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Wilson's dramatic work explores the black experience in twentieth-century America and is perhaps best known for the series of ten plays that portray the African-American life set specifically in Wilson's own Hill District of Pittsburgh in each decade of the twentieth century. Called The Pittsburgh Cycle (alternatively, the Century Cycle), this series of plays include some of his most critically acclaimed works, including Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (the only one of the cycle not set in Pittsburgh), which was performed on Broadway in 1984; Fences (1985), The Piano Lesson (1989), and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1986).

Wilson dropped out of school at the age of sixteen and began educating himself at the public library. He became active in theater after founding a theater company in Pittsburgh in 1968 called Black Horizons on the Hill with fellow playwright Rob Penny. Wilson's many honors and awards include two Pulitzer Prizes (for Fences and The Piano Lesson ), a Tony award (for Fences ), a National Humanities Medal (1999), Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships in playwriting, and several New York Drama Critics' Circle awards.

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004, reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. "Biographical Sketch of August Wilson." August Wilson Center for African American Culture. http://www.augustwilsoncenter.org/awc/augustwilson.php, accessed October 20, 2010.

From the guide to the Richard Hoffman - August Wilson collection, 1988-1999, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)

Brooklyn-based theater collector and book dealer Richard Hoffman built a number of literary collections around American playwrights over a period of many years. Hoffman has said that he entered the United States Army in the 1950s as an actor and left as a writer. His military experience led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama. After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City University of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill fellowship for playwriting. He also began to seriously collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

American dramatist, writer, and essayist Arthur Miller (1915-2005) is considered a pioneer of expressionistic realism in post-World War II American theater. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Miller's stage plays began receiving a number of awards, including the Drama Critics' Circle Awards, 1947, for All My Sons, and 1949, for Death of a Salesman ; Tony Awards, 1947, for All My Sons, 1949, for Death of a Salesman, and 1953, for The Crucible ; Donaldson Awards, 1947, for All My Sons, 1949, for Death of a Salesman, and 1953, for The Crucible ; Pulitzer Prize for drama, 1949, for Death of a Salesman . Frequently cited as one of the central works of twentieth-century American drama, Death of a Salesman remains Miller's best known work.

Miller's play concerning the Salem witch trials, The Crucible (1953), has been interpreted by some critics as an allegory for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Trials, which investigated the motion picture industry searching for communist sympathizers in the late 1940s through the 1950s. Miller himself, accused of communist sympathies, was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but refused to provide the committee with the names of other supposed communists. As a result Miller was found in contempt of Congress, but the conviction was overturned in 1958. During this same period Miller's life was affected by his marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe, whom he wed in 1956. The public attention that surrounded the couple combined with Monroe's troubled fame proved difficult for Miller. However, his script for The Misfits (1961), based on a short story he first published in Esquire magazine in 1957, was written with Monroe in mind and reveals the admirable qualities he saw in her. The couple divorced in 1961. In After the Fall (1967), Miller further revealed the complexities of his relationship with Monroe, but within a broader thematic context that addresses man's alienation. One of Miller's most successful Broadway plays, The Price (1968), recalls the themes of his earlier works, such as All My Sons and Death of a Salesman . His other plays include Incident at Vichy (1964), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977), The American Clock (1980), The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), and Broken Glass (1994).

As a socially conscientious writer, Miller has promoted human rights and artistic freedom; while serving as the president of International P.E.N. (1965-1969), Miller worked to open the organization to Soviet Bloc countries and to provide support for imprisoned and persecuted writers. He is credited with vitalizing the organization during his time as president.

Miller has received many honors for his writing, including an Obie Award, two New York Drama Critics' Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize (1949), the American Academy of Arts and Letters gold medal (1959), a John F. Kennedy Award for Lifetime Achievement (1984), the Jerusalem Prize (2003), and many other honors.

Contemporary Authors Online , Gale, 2004, reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2004.

From the guide to the Richard Hoffman - Arthur Miller collection, 1945-2002, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)

"John Guare." Contemporary Authors Online (reproduced in Biography Resource Center). http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed January 2009).

Brooklyn-based theater collector and book dealer Richard Hoffman built a number of literary collections around American playwrights over a period of many years. Hoffman has said that he entered the United States Army in the 1950s as an actor and left as a writer. His military experience led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama. After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City University of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill fellowship for playwriting. He also began to seriously collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

American playwright John Guare (1938- ), whose award-winning plays are known for their dark humor and sharp portrayals of the American family, has had a successful career in theater since his debut in 1960. His plays have been produced in many major American cities such as New York and Los Angeles, as well as abroad. In addition to writing original screenplays, such as Atlantic City (1980), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, Guare has also successfully adapted many of his own plays for the screen, such as the multi-award-winning Six Degrees of Separation (1990).

Guare was born February 5, 1938, in New York, New York. Guare wrote his first play at the age of 11, well before his education at Georgetown University and Yale University. Guare's first success as a playwright came in 1968 when his one-act play Muzeeka earned him an Obie Award. Guare's darkly humorous vision of the American family manifests itself in scenes of illness, painful death, and murder and is reflected in such works as House of Blue Leaves (1971) and Bosoms and Neglect (1979). Guare has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including a New York Drama Critics' Award, an Obie, the Outer Critics' Circle Award and the Los Angeles Critics' Prize in 1971 for House of Blue Leaves. In 1972, he was awarded a Tony and a Rockefeller grant in playwriting, and for Atlantic City (1980) he received the New York Film Critics Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics' Award, the National Society of Film Critics' Award, the Venice Film Festival Grand Prize, and an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. In 1989 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; 1993 saw Guare's election to the Theatre Hall of Fame; and in 2005, he was awarded an Obie for sustained achievement.

From the guide to the Richard Hoffman - John Guare collection, 1972-1993, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)

Brooklyn-based theater collector and book dealer Richard Hoffman built a number of literary collections around American playwrights over a period of many years. Hoffman has said that he entered the United States Army in the 1950s as an actor and left as a writer. His military experience led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama. After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City University of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill fellowship for playwriting. He also began to seriously collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

American playwright Neil Simon has emerged as one of the twentieth century's most popular and commercially successful American writers of stage comedies. His best known comedies include Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple (1965), Plaza Suite (1968), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), and The Sunshine Boys (1972). Simon's more serious works, however, including his autobiographical trilogy, Brighton Beach Memoirs (1982), Biloxi Blues (1984), and Broadway Bound (1986), have earned him respect as a serious dramatist. Many of Simon's plays have been successfully adapted for the screen, including Barefoot in the Park (1967), The Odd Couple (1968), and The Sunshine Boys (1975).

Simon was born July 4, 1927, in the Bronx, New York, a setting that often recurs in his work. He began his career co-writing comedy sketches for radio with brother Danny Simon in the 1940s. During the 1950s the pair wrote for television personalities such as Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and Jackie Gleason, occasionally working with writers Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. The brothers also co-wrote the early Broadway success Come Blow Your Horn (1959).

Simon has received numerous awards and honors during his career, including Emmy awards for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows (1957) and The Phil Silvers Show (1959); and Antoinette Perry awards (the "Tony") for The Odd Couple (best playwright, 1965), for Biloxi Blues (best drama, 1985), and for Lost in Yonkers (best play, 1991). Simon received a special Tony Award for overall contributions to the theater in 1975; and Academy Award nominations for The Odd Couple (1968) and California Suite (1978). The Sunshine Boys (1975) and The Goodbye Girl (1977) received Academy Award nominations as well as nominations for Golden Globe awards. Simon was honored with the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1983 for Brighton Beach Memoirs and with a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991, for Lost in Yonkers .

"Neil Simon." Contemporary Authors Online . Detroit: Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Gale Biography In Context , accessed November 5, 2010.

From the guide to the Richard Hoffman - Neil Simon collection, 1955-1993, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)