The cult of the child performer was a significant emergence of the Victorian age. Nurtured by growing mass media, the commodification of these children extended beyond the stage itself into merchandising and celebrity. Victorian theatre children found themselves not merely baubles in a spectacle, but essential ingredients of Victorian entertainment. This centre-staging was echoed in the political realm: Lewis Carroll, Augustus Harris and Millicent Fawcett stood at the forefront of a fierce public debate between a Victorian public impassioned by juvenile display and social reformers determined to stamp out exploitation.

This is the first major study of children in Victorian theatre. It exposes contradictions between Victorian conceptions of childhood and fashions in theatrical taste. Forgotten scripts are rediscovered, while new light is shed on familiar texts such as Alice in Wonderland and Pirates of Penzance. At the centre are the child actors, the social, political and artistic context of their working lives, and their developing professionalism.

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.' - Siân 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

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

ANNE VARTY is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests include the literature, theatre and culture of the Victorian period and she is author of A Preface to Oscar Wilde (1998) and Eve's Century. A Sourcebook of Writings on Women and Journalism 1895-1918 (2000).