Excerpt from the introduction to the Index:
The Campbell Howard Collection of Australian Plays in Manuscript housed in the Dixson Library at the University of New England represents a unique body of research material concerning Australian drama of the period 1920-1955. It contains some three hundred plays in manuscript or typescript together with published plays, theatre programmes, and correspondence and research files. [...] Major writers such as Katharine Susannah Prichard, Dymphna Cusack, Vance Palmer, Louis Esson, Ruth Park and Patrick White are represented.
Described in newspapers as a 'short but horrific melodrama in rhyme', The Mystery of Manfred Moon was a 'satire upon the old-time melodrama when the heroine was without spot, and the villain without a redeeming feature'. (See 'Little Theatre Company', Table Talk, 9 June 1932, p.41.)
The Mystery of Manfred Moon was one of Handley's more successful plays, and was performed intermittently until at least 1946.
1932