I know that to the majority of people who merely regard the theatre as a place for occasional recreation, it is a subject for amazement that others can exist who, not belonging to the theatrical profession, take an absorbing and lasting interest in the stage, and in those actors and actresses who have made its past history glorious, as well as in the artists who adorn and make it a delight in the present. I wonder how many of us truly realise the weight of Charles Dickens's words: "If any man were to tell me that he denied his acknowledgments to the stage, I would simply put to him one question-whether he remembered his first play?" Not only freely, but with gratitude, I acknowledge my indebtedness to the theatre, and it is certain that from that magic night when for the first time I saw the glitter of the footlights and watched the rise of the curtain, I entered upon a new and most fascinating life. Of course I was called "stage struck," and those who controlled me shook their heads, thought it a great pity, and did their best to thwart my inclinations.

In this essay collection, established experts and new researchers, reassess the performances and cultural significance of Ellen Terry, her daughter Edith Craig (1869–1947) and her son Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966), as well as Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll and some less familiar figures.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS EBOOK DOES NOT CONTAIN PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE PRINT EDITION. Deemed "a prodigy among biographers" by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater. Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voiced merchant's clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic presence. He would become one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Terry and Irving created a powerhouse of the arts in London's Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker—who would go on to write Dracula—as manager. Celebrities whose scandalous private lives commanded global attention, they took America by stormin wildly popular national tours. Their all-consuming professional lives left little room for their brilliant but troubled children. Henry's boys followed their father into the theater but could not escape the shadow of his fame. Ellen's feminist daughter, Edy, founded an avant-garde theater and a largely lesbian community at her mother's country home. But it was Edy's son, the revolutionary theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig, who possessed the most remarkable gifts and the most perplexing inability to realize them. A now forgotten modernist visionary, he collaborated with the Russian director Stanislavski on a production of Hamlet that forever changed the way theater was staged. Maddeningly self-absorbed, he inherited his mother's potent charm and fathered thirteen children by eight women, including a daughter with the dancer Isadora Duncan. An epic story spanning a century of cultural change, A Strange Eventful History finds space for the intimate moments of daily existence as well as the bewitching fantasies played out by its subjects. Bursting with charismatic life, it is an incisive portrait of two families who defied the strictures of their time. It will be swiftly recognized as a classic. Please note: This ebook edition does not contain photos and illustrations that appeared in the print edition.

Nina Auerbach brilliantly reveals the Ellen Terry whose roles, on stage and off, embodied everything that a rapidly changing world exhorted women to be.

"McDonald also discerns parallels and distinctions in the approaches of Siddons, Terry, and Dench to the vocation of acting - specifically to Lady Macbeth and other great Shakespearean roles. Look to the Lady also helps us to better understand the place and function of the theater in British national life and what constitutes "great acting" at various historical moments." "Throughout, McDonald blends learned commentary on the history and culture of the stage with entertaining details about the appearance, personality, genealogy, and private life of each actor. Including some rarely seen images and drawing on previously untapped reviews and anecdotes, this is a lively introduction to the burgeoning field of performance criticism."--BOOK JACKET.

A lavishly illustrated biography about Victorian actress - no competing title