Souvenir fan from the Malvern Festival belonging to Mrs Gabrielle Enthoven, ca. 1930, with unbroken paper seal.

The Malvern Festival was founded in 1929 by Barry Jackson, director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, working with Roy Limbert, manager of the theatre at Malvern. Jackson's festivals became an annual event. Initially devoted to the plays of George Bernard Shaw, they later expanded to include the work of other dramatists. The first festivals ran for a fortnight each summer, but by 1934 they were lasting for a month. Jackson was in charge until 1937, with Limbert directing the next two. The outbreak of war put an end to the festivals, and though there was an attempt to revive them in 1949, it wasn't until 1965 that the Malvern Festival was re-established.

This souvenir of the Malvern Festival's early years was owned by Mrs Gabrielle Enthoven. From an early age Gabrielle Enthoven, née Romaine (1868-1950), was fascinated by the theatre. After her marriage in 1893 she began to collect press cuttings and playbills and, following the death of her husband in 1910, she became involved with the Pioneer Players, a feminist theatre company for which she wrote plays. As her collection of theatrical material grew, Mrs Enthoven became aware that no archive or museum was documenting the British theatre as she was doing. In 1911 she wrote to the Observer newspaper, beginning a campaign for the establishment of a national collection for the performing arts within an existing museum. Though she received support in the press, an attempt by the London Museum to establish a permanent exhibition of theatre was unsuccessful. Mrs Enthoven, however, continued her campaign and, after several attempts, in 1924 she persuaded the V&A to take her vast collection, which by this time was outgrowing her home. The Gabrielle Enthoven Collection was housed in the Prints and Drawings department and Mrs Enthoven continued to work on the collection in a voluntary capacity and provided funding for staff and for new acquisitions. The Gabrielle Enthoven Collection was one of the founding collections of the V&A's Theatre Museum (1974-2007) and the collection's playbills, cuttings, photographs, prints, designs and memorabilia are now held in the V&A Theatre and Performance department.