By the time Amelia Hall died suddenly in December 1984 she had become one of Canada's most respected and well-loved actresses. In this book she has left an incomparable record of her early years in the professional theatre in Canada. In particular, these memoirs chronicle the history of the Canadian Repertory Theatre of Ottawa, one of the first professional repertory theatres in Canada. Under Amelia Hall's direction in the late forties and early fifties, the CRT gave a start to the careers of such notable Canadian actors as Christopher Plummer, Eric House, William Hutt, Ted Follows and William Shatner. In these days of long-running corporate subsidized extravaganzas, it is instructive to read of the struggles and accomplishments of these pioneers of theatre in Canada, performing weekly repertory on a shoestring budget, with few facilities adn minuscule salaries. Yet it was these enthusiasts who provided the basis for the flowering of the Canadian theatrical scene in the 1960s and 1970s. It is appropriate that these memoirs should culminate in Amelia Hall's portrayal of the Lady Anne in Richard III opposite Alec Guinness at the first Stratford Festival in 1953, making her the first Canadian and the first woman to speak on the Stratford stage. This book is lavishly illustrated with photographs from Amelia Hall's personal collection, now housed at the National Archives of Canada.

'Life-writing' is a generic term meant to encompass a range of writings about lives or parts of lives, or which provide materials out of which lives or parts of lives are composed. These writings include not only memoir, autobiography, biography, diaries, autobiographical fiction, and biographical fiction, but letters, writs, wills, written anecdotes, depositions, marginalia, lyric poems, scientific and historical writings, and digital forms (including blogs, tweets, Facebook entries). On Life-Writing offers a sampling of approaches to the study of life-writing, introducing readers to something of the range of forms the term encompasses, their changing fortunes and features, the notions of 'life,' 'self' and 'story' which help to explain these changing fortunes and features, recent attempts to group forms, the permeability of the boundaries between forms, the moral problems raised by life-writing in all forms, but particularly in fictional forms, and the relations between life-writing and history, life-writing and psychoanalysis, life-writing and philosophy. The essays mostly focus on individual instances rather than fields, whether historical, theoretical or generic. Generalizations are grounded in particulars. For example, the role of the 'life-changing encounter,' a frequent trope in literary life-writing, is pondered by Hermione Lee through an account of a much-storied first meeting between the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova; James Shapiro examines the history of the 'cradle to grave' life-narrative, as well as the potential distortions it breeds, by focusing on Shakespeare biography, in particular attempts to explain Shakespeare's so-called 'lost years'.

Rodney Bolt's delightful life of Marlowe plays out a surprising solution to an enduring literary mystery, bringing the spirit of Shakespeare alive as we've never seen it before. Rodney Bolt's book is not an attempt to prove that, rather than dying at 29 in a tavern brawl, Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to Europe, and went on to write the work attributed to Shakespeare. Instead, it takes that as the starting point for a playful and brilliantly written "fake biography" of Marlowe, which turns out to be a life of the Bard as well. Using real historical sources (as well as the occasional red herring) plus a generous dose of speculation, Bolt paints a rich and rollicking picture of Elizabethan life. As we accompany Marlowe into the halls of academia, the society of the popular English players traveling Europe, and the dangerous underworld of Elizabethan espionage, a fascinating and almost plausible life story emerges, along with a startlingly fresh look at the plays and poetry we know as Shakespeare's. Tapping into centuries of speculation about the man behind the work, about whom so few facts are known for sure, Rodney Bolt slyly winds the lives of two beloved playwrights into one.

Chronological coverage with articles on social, political, cultural, economic and ecclesiastical history. Book Review Section provides up-to-date critical analyses of up to 600 titles in each volume.

"A fascinating history of a wonderful old theatre." - Hume Cronyn In September of 1901 London's New Grand Opera House flung open its doors. Boasting a beautiful interior design, and with the most modern stage equipment available, the theatre was large enough to accommodate over 1,700 patrons and the largest touring shows of the time. With impresario Ambrose J. Small at the helm, a new era in theatrical entertainment began. Throughout the next hundred years, the Grand Theatre hosted everything from stock companies to minstrel shows, from vaudeville to star-studded productions. The celebrated amateur theatre company, London Little Theatre, made The Grand its home for decades. As Canadian theatre came into its own in the 1970s, The Grand embraced professional theatre status. Throughout all these changes The Grand has remained London's "Grand Old Lady of Richmond Street." Legendary performers from the past, including the Marks Brothers, Anna Pavlova and John Gielgud have graced its vast stage, as have such contemporary stage stars as Hume Cronyn, William Hutt and Martha Henry. This extensively researched book, lavishly illustrated, lovingly documents the life of The Grand. Theatre stories from every decade of The Grand's colourful life abound throughout. To read this book is to come to know London's Grand Theatre in all its architectural splendour and its legacy in Canadian theatre history.