Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Children and Theatre in Victorian Britain

  • Book
  • © 2008

Overview

Authors:
  1. Anne Varty
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction The Child on the Victorian Stage

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 1-20

  3. Training Juvenile Actors

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 21-42

  4. Looking-Glass Children: The Performing Child as Erotic Subject

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 43-69

  5. Pastorals and Primitives: Child Actors in Arcadia

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 70-137

  6. Pantomime: An Audience of Children

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 138-147

  7. Classifying the Juvenile Actor

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 148-177

  8. Theatre Children and the School Boards

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 178-197

  9. Vigilance and Virtue

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 198-219

  10. Theatre and Cruelty

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 220-233

  11. Conclusion: Dressing Up

    • Anne Varty
    Pages 234-250

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 251-306
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

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.

Reviews

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

'...[a] meticulously researched study...' - Theatre Research International

About the author

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).

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation