Catalogue description Lord Chamberlain's Department: Plays

When the texts of stage plays were submitted for approval the Lord Chamberlain kept them although he was not legally entitled to do this until 1912. Records re-transferred to Lord Chamberlain's Department in 1923.

The texts of plays submitted for censoring were formerly at the Public Record Office, but were returned to the Lord Chamberlain's Department in 1923. The plays covering the period 1824 to 1850 were subsequently deposited in the British Library Department of Manuscripts. In 1988 it was agreed that papers relating to the examination of those plays formerly in the Public Record Office, which had remained in the Lord Chamberlain's Office until that date, should also be deposited in the British Library. The earliest plays submitted, to 1824, were sold in 1825, on the death of the examiner in whose possession they were. They passed, in 1917, to the Huntington Library in the USA.