At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia was the theatrical center of the United States, owing largely to the elegant Chestnut Street Theatre and its excellent resident company of actors. The survival and success of the company can be greatly attributed to Anne Brunton Merry.Mrs. Merry, who made her first appearance on stage at the ago of sixteen, experienced meteoric success in the English theatre, and after only three years was being favorably compared with te famed Sarah Siddons. She came to the Chestnut Street company in 1796, tow years afer its formation, and through her portrayals of Shakespearean heroines, as well as roles in sentimental comedy and in tragedy, she soon became the most celebrated actress in the American theatre. She established new standards of excellence in her stage portrayals, and during her tenure as manger of the Chestnut Street theatre, she transferred her own high standards to the entire company, demanding a carefully executed theatre operation and advancing the acting profession to a new level of social acceptance. In this sympathetic portrait of an unusual woman, Professor Doty traces Mrs. Merry's career from its beginning at the Bristol theatre in England in 1785 to its tragically early end in 1808. From contemporary newspapers, periodicals, memoirs, and diaries, the author has fashioned a fascinating story of a great actress and her contribution to the development of American repertory theatre during this vital period.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia was the theatrical center of the United States, owing largely to the elegant Chestnut Street Theatre and its excellent resident company of actors. The survival and success of the company can be greatly attributed to Anne Brunton Merry.Mrs. Merry, who made her first appearance on stage at the ago of sixteen, experienced meteoric success in the English theatre, and after only three years was being favorably compared with te famed Sarah Siddons. She came to the Chestnut Street company in 1796, tow years afer its formation, and through her portrayals of Shakespearean heroines, as well as roles in sentimental comedy and in tragedy, she soon became the most celebrated actress in the American theatre. She established new standards of excellence in her stage portrayals, and during her tenure as manger of the Chestnut Street theatre, she transferred her own high standards to the entire company, demanding a carefully executed theatre operation and advancing the acting profession to a new level of social acceptance. In this sympathetic portrait of an unusual woman, Professor Doty traces Mrs. Merry's career from its beginning at the Bristol theatre in England in 1785 to its tragically early end in 1808. From contemporary newspapers, periodicals, memoirs, and diaries, the author has fashioned a fascinating story of a great actress and her contribution to the development of American repertory theatre during this vital period.

Adapted to film by both Louis Malle and Joachim Trier, this heart-rending and tenderly wrought novel narrates the decline of an artist and heroin addict in 1920s Paris. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle might be said to be both the Hemingway and the Fitzgerald of twentieth-century French literature, a battle-scarred veteran of the First World War whose work chronicles the trials and tribulations of a lost generation, a man about town, a heartbreaker with a broken heart, a literary stylist whose work is as tough as it is lyrical and polished. Politically compromised as Drieu came to be by his affiliation with the fascist right and collaboration under Nazi occupation—Drieu committed suicide at the end of the war—his novels remain vivid reflections of a broken spiritual and political world of the interwar years and as works of art, and to this day they are widely read and greatly admired in France. The Fire Within, which has been successfully adapted to the screen by Louis Malle and more recently Joachim Trier, is the lacerating tale of Alain Leroy, a war veteran and beautiful young man of whom the world is expected but who has taken refuge from the world in drugs. After being institutionalized, Alain emerges to try to put his life together again, but in spite of the attentions of friends and lovers, he struggles to find his way.

In this essay published in 1934, the writer Pierre Drieu la Rochelle demonstrates the fundamental contradictions of Marxism and draws a parallel between Soviet-style communism and the Italian and German fascist regimes, whose rapprochement he in a way welcomes by declaring himself in turn a socialist and a fascist...