My friend Barbara Cavanagh, who has died aged 86, was an antiquarian theatrical bookseller dealing in manuscripts, ballet ephemera and opera materials. Self-taught, steeped in the arts, pre-cinema optics and 19th-century theatre, she researched, classified and catalogued many collections, from costume designs collected by the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev to a 25,000-strong archive of theatre programmes.
Barbara was born in Mumbles, Swansea, to Fred Davies and his wife, Edna (nee Annetts), who ran a bakery. They lived on a hill above Mumbles lifeboat station, stricken by the 1947 Samtampa steamship disaster when Barbara was six. At primary school she would run home for lunch for a large bowl of golden ham soup, usually ducking into Oystermouth library. In 1950 she attended Brynmawr secondary modern school, and for the rest of her life would return regularly to walk the cliffs of the area and swim in the Gower bays.
Her first job, at the age of 18, was as a library assistant at Swansea University, and a year later she went to work at a bookshop in Westminster, London, run by the theatre historian Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, co-founder of the Society of Theatre Research.
In 1962 she married one of the shop’s customers, John Cavanagh. Together they founded Motley Books in 1963 – gathering stock across the continent, which they sold by catalogue to academic institutions, public holdings and private collectors, including the emerging film-maker Bill Douglas.
They left London in 1972 to live in Mottisfont Abbey, a country estate in Hampshire which they rented from the National Trust on the agreement that they provided public access to, and tours of, the building. In addition, Barbara set up a small primary school in the vast house, employing a teacher there, and for the next two decades she and John also used the building to host productions by the touring company Theatre Set-Up, the local Maskers Theatre Company and King Alfred’s College, hosting plein-air theatre, revels and garden parties.
Her marriage to John did not last, and after their separation in 1993 (they never divorced) Barbara gravitated to dealing in ephemera – transient documents from the everyday, such as sheet music, playbills and letters. While selling at an ephemera fair in 1997 she met the conceptual artist David Troostwyk and they became partners until his death in 2009.
In 2012 Barbara moved to Hastings, East Sussex, to help raise her newly born granddaughter, which is how my evolving family befriended her. Elegant and gracious, she loved life – both for the simple and unusual things it offered. She appreciated the vibrant local music and arts scene in Hastings, and embraced being by the sea again, her beach hut shared with other families and many friends.
Until the end of this summer Barbara continued to deal in theatrical material, and recently sold a rare prompt book dated 1801 of La Perouse, a pantomime melodrama given at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, to the Garrick Club library.
She is survived by two daughters from her marriage, Catherine and Olivia, her granddaughter, Erin, and her brother, Peter.
