Richard Hoffman - John Guare collection

Brooklyn-based theater collector and book dealer Richard Hoffman built a number of literary collections around American playwrights over a period of many years.

Hoffman has said that he entered the United States Army in the 1950s as an actor and left as a writer. His military experience led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama. After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City University of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill fellowship for playwriting. He also began to seriously collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

American playwright John Guare (1938- ), whose award-winning plays are known for their dark humor and sharp portrayals of the American family, has had a successful career in theater since his debut in 1960. His plays have been produced in many major American cities such as New York and Los Angeles, as well as abroad. In addition to writing original screenplays, such as Atlantic City (1980), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, Guare has also successfully adapted many of his own plays for the screen, such as the multi-award-winning Six Degrees of Separation (1990).

Guare was born February 5, 1938, in New York, New York. Guare wrote his first play at the age of 11, well before his education at Georgetown University and Yale University. Guare's first success as a playwright came in 1968 when his one-act play Muzeeka earned him an Obie Award. Guare's darkly humorous vision of the American family manifests itself in scenes of illness, painful death, and murder and is reflected in such works as House of Blue Leaves (1971) and Bosoms and Neglect (1979). Guare has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including a New York Drama Critics' Award, an Obie, the Outer Critics' Circle Award and the Los Angeles Critics' Prize in 1971 for House of Blue Leaves. In 1972, he was awarded a Tony and a Rockefeller grant in playwriting, and for Atlantic City (1980) he received the New York Film Critics Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics' Award, the National Society of Film Critics' Award, the Venice Film Festival Grand Prize, and an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. In 1989 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; 1993 saw Guare's election to the Theatre Hall of Fame; and in 2005, he was awarded an Obie for sustained achievement.

"John Guare." Contemporary Authors Online (reproduced in Biography Resource Center). http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed January 2009).