A detailed study of how French actresses were received by English audiences.

At the forefront of the entertainment industries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were singular actors: Sarah Bernhardt, Gabrielle Réjane, and Mistinguett. Talented women with global ambitions, these performers pioneered the use of film and theatrics to gain international renown. Transnational Trailblazers of Early Cinema traces how these women emerged from the Parisian periphery to become world-famous stars. Through intrepid business prowess and the cultivation of celebrity images, these three artists strengthened ties among countries, continents, and cultures during pivotal years of change.

London, 1820. The British capital is a metropolis that overwhelms dwellers and visitors alike with constant exposure to all kinds of sensory stimulation. Over the next two decades, the city’s tumult will reach new heights: as population expansion places different classes in dangerous proximity and ideas of political and social reform linger in the air, London begins to undergo enormous infrastructure change that will alter it forever. It is the London of this period that editors Roger Parker and Susan Rutherford pinpoint in this book, which chooses one broad musical category—voice—and engages with it through essays on music of the streets, theaters, opera houses, and concert halls; on the raising of voices in religious and sociopolitical contexts; and on the perception of voice in literary works and scientific experiments with acoustics. Emphasizing human subjects, this focus on voice allows the authors to explore the multifaceted issues that shaped London, from the anxiety surrounding the city’s importance in the musical world at large to the changing vocal imaginations that permeated the epoch. Capturing the breadth of sonic stimulations and cultures available—and sometimes unavoidable—to residents at the time, London Voices, 1820–1840 sheds new light on music in Britain and the richness of London culture during this period.

From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women and streetwalkers, the so-called 'fallen woman' was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. Acts of Desire traces the theatrical representation of illicit female sexuality from early nineteenth-century melodramas, through sensation dramas, Ibsenite sex-problem plays and suffrage dramas, to early social realism and the well-made plays of Pinero, Jones, Maugham, and Coward. This study reveals and analyses enduring plot lines and tropes that continue to influence contemporary theatre and film. Women's illicit desires became a theatrical focus for anxieties and debates surrounding gender roles, women's rights, sexual morality, class conflict, economics, eugenics, and female employment. The theatre played a central role in both establishing and challenging sexual norms, and many playwrights exploited the ambiguities and implications of performance to stage disruptive spectacles of female desire, agency, energy, and resourcefulness, using ingenuity and skill to evade the control of that ever watchful state censor, the Lord Chamberlain. Covering an astonishing range of theatrical, social, literary, and political texts, this study challenges the currency and validity of the long-established critical term 'the fallen woman', and establishes the centrality of the theatre to cultural and sexual debates throughout the period. Acts of Desire encompasses published and unpublished plays, archival material, censorship records, and contemporary reviews to reveal the surprising continuities, complex debates, covert meanings, and exuberant spectacles which marked the history of theatrical representations of female sexuality. Engaging with popular and 'high art' performances, this study also reveals the vital connections between theatre and its sister arts, tracing the exchange of influences between Victorian drama, narrative painting and the novel, and showing theatre to be a crucial but neglected element in the cultural history of women's sexuality.

Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook that brings out the best scholarship in the field of interdisciplinary women's and gender historyfocused on - and produced in - Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. In this region the field of women's and gender history has developed uevenly and has remained only marginally represented in the "international" canon.

Dame Maggie Smith stands as a remarkable example of the concomitance – in a performer’s career – of typecasting and characterisation, that is the ability to impersonate ‘against type’ infinitely various screen or stage characters. This book of appreciation essentially aims at correcting the preconceived image that the general public has of Dame Maggie Smith. Focusing on the last twenty-five years, it examines, through the many parts she has played since the early 1990s, her ability to go beyond typecasting and give, thanks to her chameleon skills, nuanced and convincing portrays of infinitely diverse characters. From The Importance of Being Earnest to Gosford Park and Becoming Jane, to Downton Abbey and Sister Act, to The Last September and the Harry Potter saga, Dame Maggie Smith has had a wide spanning career in TV and Film. Not to mention her theatrical work on the stage. Author Caroline Fevrier lives in Paris, France and has a passion for theatre and performing. Caroline holds a PhD in Literature and Humanities and an MA in Literature and Drama. She was also trained as a professional performer and has been involved in several stage productions and short movies. Caroline regularly gives lectures on theatre and performance to academic audiences and had published several books on literature and humanities, and now focuses closely on the performing arts.

Sophie Duncan illuminates iconoclastic performances of Shakespeare's heroines in late Victorian theatre, through the celebrity, commentary, and careers of the actresses who played them. Duncan draws on a wealth of archival material to explore the vital ways in which fin-de-siecle Shakespeare and Victorian theatre culture conditioned each other.