Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth-Century Britain [Paperback]

This collection of essays recovers the names and careers of nineteenth-century women playwrights.This collection of essays, written by a team of leading scholars in the field, undertakes not simply to recover the names and careers of women playwrights but to call into question the whole idea of what a playwright is, and what she does, and why it matters. Gender inquiry is the start: destabilising the category of playwrights loosens the borders of theatre history making it possible to reconceptualize theatre and drama not as a product of culture but as social processes dynamically interacting with culture.This collection of essays, written by a team of leading scholars in the field, undertakes not simply to recover the names and careers of women playwrights but to call into question the whole idea of what a playwright is, and what she does, and why it matters. Gender inquiry is the start: destabilising the category of playwrights loosens the borders of theatre history making it possible to reconceptualize theatre and drama not as a product of culture but as social processes dynamically interacting with culture.This collection of essays, written by a team of leading scholars in the field, undertakes not simply to recover the names and careers of women playwrights but to call into question the whole idea of what a playwright is, what she does, and why it matters. Gender inquiry is the start: destabilizing the category of playwrights loosens the borders of theater history making it possible to reconceptualize theater and drama not as a product of culture but as social processes dynamically interacting with culture.List of illustrations; List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Tracy C. Davis and Ellen Donkin; Part I. In Judgment: 1. The sociable playwright and representative citizen Tracy C. Davis; 2. 'To be public as a genius and private as a woman': the critical framing of nineteenth-century British women playwrights Gay Gibson Cima; 3. Mrs Gore gives tit-fl“f