Children and Theatre in Victorian Britain [Hardcover]

The cult of the child performer was a significant emergence of the Victorian age. Fierce public debate and lasting legislation grew out of the conflict between a desire for juvenile display and a determination to stop exploitation. This study explores the social and artistic context of their lives and their developing professionalism as actors.Introduction Training Juvenile Actors Looking-Glass Children: The Performing Child as Erotic Subject Pastorals and Primitives: Child Actors in Arcadia Classifying the Juvenile Actor Theatre Children and the School Boards Vigilance and Virtue Theatre and Cruelty Conclusion: Dressing Up Appendix A: List of Child Actors in Lewis Carroll's Diaries and Letters Appendix B: National Vigilance Association, Regulations for Employment of Children in Theatres

Shortlisted for the 2007 Theatre Book Prize. For more information about the prize, see http://www.str.org.uk/

'The author really goes into the whole complexity of the situation of having children in the theatre: the morality of it, the darker aspects of it, how they were trained, what sort of people trained. It is endlessly fascinating, I would think for anybody...very well written and very enjoyable.' - Si?n Phillips, Actress, Theatre Book Judge

'Children and Theatre in Victorian Britain is an excellent overview of the various concerns - legal, artistic and sociological - tracing the changing notions of childhood, of children, and of their place in a world that was slowly shifting its emphasis from the adult to the child.' - Judith Flanders, Times Literary Supplement

'Children were such a prominent part of the Victorian theatre onstage, offstage and in the audience that it is strange that hitherto there has been no book-length study of the subject. Happily Anne Varty has remedied this with a wide-ranging, thoroughly researched and eminently readable account.' - Richard Foulkes, Theatre Notebook

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