Paul David Magriel papers

1925-1957

Paul David Magriel was a dance historian and author. He is best known for his A Bibliography of Dancing (1936), which was the twentieth-century's first major bibliography of printed dance books. Drawing on material in the collections of the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Boston Public Library, Harvard College Library and from the catalogues of major European libraries, Magriel produced a bibliography listing nearly five thousand books and articles. Magriel later compiled a series of supplements and specialized bibliographies on other aspects of the dance.

In 1936 he was engaged as the advance man for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan. Since the company was booked primarily at universities, Magriel used the travel opportunity to continue his dance research with the goal of compiling a dance dictionary. In 1939 he was hired by the Museum of Modern Art to be the first curator of their new Dance Archives, a position he had to leave in 1942 after he was drafted into the service.

After World War II, Magriel began work as an editor with the Ballet Society. He published three illustrated monographs while working there – Nijinsky, Pavlova, and Duncan. He also published a larger work, Chronicles of the American Dance (1948).

In 1955 Magriel began to work on an updated version of A Bibliography of Dancing, but the project was never completed.