Worth, Katharine (writer)
Katharine Worth (1922-2015) was emeritus professor and founder of the department of drama and theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London.
She became a lecturer in English at Royal Holloway College in 1964 before becoming a reader in drama there in 1974. She was enthusiastic about many dramatic forms, but her abiding passion was for the work of Samuel Beckett. She joined the panel editing and creating the Beckett portions of the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and later devised a lecture series derived from the experience. Beckett granted her permission to produce several of his plays for television and radio, as well as attending some of the rehearsals for London productions of his plays, including those featuring Billie Whitelaw.
She retired in 1987 but Beckett continued to provide a source of creativity. She published several work on the writer, including the highly personal monograph Samuel Beckett’s Theatre: Life Journeys (1999). During her retirement, she was a visiting professor at King’s College London, was co-editor of Theatre Notebook and held a Leverhulme Professorial Fellowship.
The collection includes production design material for the 1955 Waiting for Godot set by Peter Snow – including a model of the set; theatre memorabilia, correspondence, notes of Katharine Worth; Beckett related VHS and cassette tapes.
More information
- A full description is available on our online database.
- A handlist for the whole collection is available here.
- See also a list of other writers’ and artists’ archives here.
- More information about Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) can be found in The Beckett Collection, which is the world’s largest collection of resources relating to the writer.
- See also the James and Elizabeth Knowlson Collections and the Billie Whitelaw Collection
Sources from our library collections
- We have several of Katherine Worth’s books in the open access library.