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From Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers to Arthur Kopit and Brian Friel, agent Audrey Wood encouraged and guided the unique talents of playwrights in the Broadway theatre of her day. Her quiet determination and burning enthusiasm brought America´s finest mid-century playwrights to prominence and altered stage history.

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PART I: GENESIS OF AN AGENT 1905-1939 Stage-Struck Starting Out A Room of Their Own PART II: THE FEARFUL PATH 1940-1970 The Bitch Goddess Dancing on Eggs Personal Monsters Darkness in the Heartland Iron Butterflies Accidental Career Irish Fictions PART III: ENTRANCES AND EXITS 1971-1986 Out-of-the-Ordinary Guardian Angel The Liebling-Wood Agency´s Client List of Playwrights, 1938-1958

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Milly S. Barranger is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. She is the author of several studies about twentieth-century women and modern American theatre, including Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theatre; Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theatre, and Film in the McCarthy Era; A Gambler´s Instinct: The Story of Broadway Producer Cheryl Crawford ; and Audrey Wood and the Playwrights . A former producing director of PlayMakers Repertory Company, she is coeditor of Notable Women in the American Theatre: A Biographical Dictionary . In addition to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, she has led both the National Theatre Conference and the American Theatre Association.

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