Series IX: Photographic Material

Subseries A contains photographs of Elizabeth Robins. Cabinet photos of her in American and English theatrical performances are arranged by title. There are also over forty formal portraits of Robins, varying from studio to passport photographs. Photos of Robins can also be found in Subseries C-F.

Subseries B contains photographs of early American and British actors and actresses, many in costume and theatrical pose, along with portraits of Elizabeth Robins's friends (including classmates) and relatives. Photographs of Robins' husband, George Richmond Parks, an actor with the Boston Museum Company, are also included here, as well as cabinet photos of many of her theatrical colleagues. William Archer, Florence Bell and family, and Octavia Wilberforce all are substantially represented.

Subseries C contains photographs of Elizabeth Robins' immediate family. There are childhood portraits of her brothers and sister, and the earliest Elizabeth Robins photograph, taken when she was approximately three years old. The most numerous photographs in this subseries are of her brother, Raymond Robins, including several oversize prints. The subseries also includes three daguerreotypes.

Subseries D records Robins' journey to the Alaskan Klondyke in 1900. It also includes photos given to her by friends in Alaska and those taken by commercial photographers. Gold mining, Eskimo life, Yukon River landscapes, and the early towns of Alaska receive extensive coverage. A small number of these photographs have been published in Robins' Raymond and I.

Subseries E contains an album of photographs taken at Backsettown, including interior and exterior shots of the brick-and-timber main house and of people associated with life there. There are many photographs of Octavia Wilberforce farming Backsettown's fields or tending to its cows; of Elizabeth Robins's ward, David Scott, growing up there. Postcard shots of the village of Henfield and its environs are also contained in it.

Subseries F is made up of two albums of photographs taken at Chinsegut, the Hernando County, Florida estate where Elizabeth Robins' brother, Raymond, lived. This subseries includes many candid photographs of Margaret Dreier Robins and her sister, Mary Dreier, both of whom were active in the women's movement in the United States. The reconstruction of the main house is well documented, as are the crops, flora and fauna of Chinsegut. This subseries contains a fine collection of photographs of the black servants who worked for the Robinses, providing a chronicle of their domestic and work experiences in rural Florida during the first quarter of this century.

Places visited by Elizabeth Robins and unidentified landscape photographs are contained in Subseries G. There are a few stereographs from Summit, Colorado, which include shots of gold mining camps.

Subseries H contains all of the negatives found in Series IX; they are numbered consecutively but divided by subject categories.