In the Dropping Knowledge section is a link to the Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress.

It seems Ms. Hurston registered a number of unpublished plays on which the copyright has expired. They've made scans of them available for viewing online.

About the Collection

The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress received eight of the ten Zora Neale Hurston plays that appear in The Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress in the late 1980s as transfers from the United States Copyright Office. At that time, these plays were dispersed among the approximate 250,000 transferred scripts registered as unpublished, which were arranged roughly chronologically, 1901-77, by registration numbers. The other two Hurston plays had been previously transferred when curators selected them for custody by other Library of Congress divisions, probably following their registrations in 1925 and 1944.

The Copyright Deposit Drama Collection from which the Hurston plays were selected is a rich source of twentieth-century theatrical and cultural history. It includes scripts for early silent film and vaudeville; radio and television plays; and dramas by unknown as well as famous writers, many forgotten, many unproduced, many remaining unpublished. The entire mega-collection is being microfilmed, and selected scripts, such as the Hurston plays, will be retained in their original paper format.

…Visually, the digitized images presented online in this collection are very rough, at times running into margins and off the bottom of a page. That is because they were scanned from typescript copies made on old-fashioned manual typewriters imprinting through carbon paper, with a few original typescript pages included. Hurston appears to have typed some pages herself and dictated others to clearly non-professional typists. Authorial changes on some pages are in pencil or ink, with occasional original typescript inserts. In one case, Hurston has drawn a scene's stage set (Spunk, act 1, scene 2).

So many scholars have asked to copy these play texts in the years since 1997 that the Library of Congress has decided put them online for the world to examine, enjoy, and produce. Hurston showed great foresight in depositing the scripts with the Copyright Office. She knew of its close connection to the Library of Congress, which preserves cultural-history documents. She had worked with Alan Lomax and corresponded with Benjamin Botkin, both of the Library's Archive of Folk Song (now part of the American Folklife Center). Many Hurston productions failed during her life--due, perhaps, to her strong personality, the prevailing prejudices, bad luck, or bad timing. Now her plays may be studied and staged on into a new century.

Alice L. Birney
American Literature Specialist
Manuscript Division
Library of Congress