The Stage Career of Cicely Hamilton (1895-1914)

This book presents a pioneering survey of the professional career of a woman better known as a campaigner for women's suffrage in the early twentieth century. It uses archive material to construct a chronology of productions in which she was involved either as author or actress in a twenty-year period from 1895.

Drawing on recently released or previously neglected archive material, this book is the first dedicated to the stage career of Cicely Hamilton (18721952). Best known for her work with the women's suffrage movement, Hamilton was at the same time deeply committed to the commercial stage as an actress, dramatist and activist. The book draws extensively on Hamilton's own recollections as well as those of her close associates, supplemented by contemporary press reviews and articles, and concludes with a chronology of the productions in which she performed as a touring actress based on confirmed dates and venues.

This book « () is a fascinating and fantastic resource for current and future scholars of Hamilton's work, as well as those interested in the wider framework of () the theatre industry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.»

Dr. Naomi Paxton (School of Advanced Study, University of London)

«With its documentation and assessment of Hamilton's touring career, () this well written and meticulously researched study provides an original contribution to theatre, dramatic, and reception history.»

Prof. Dr. Rudolf Weiss (University of Vienna)

Vorwort
At the birth of the Jazz Age in San Francisco, the magician Charles Carter walks on to the stage of the Curran Theatre for the most daring performance of his life. Two hours later, President Warren G. Harding will be dead.

Autorentext

Seán Moran received a PhD from the University of Gdäsk in Poland where he works at the Institute of Applied Linguistics.

Zusammenfassung
The mysterious death of President Harding in 1923 is only the curtain raiser to this extraordinary novel of magic and science. Charles Carter is Carter the Great, a name given to him by the supreme showman, Harry Houdini. Carter was born into privilege but became a magician out of need. Only at the moment of the performance, when an audience is brought together by a single experience, can Carter defeat his crippling fear of loneliness. But with every step into the twentieth Century, the stakes are growing higher. Science and the cinema are fast out-stripping even the master magician and instead of that single magic moment, there is only a headlong rush into an uncertain future.

Inhalt

Status of actress on Late Victorian and Edwardian stage Victorian Drama Edwardian Drama Actors' Association Play Actors Professional stage biography Theatre and women's suffrage campaign in UK WSPU Women's Freedom League Actresses' Franchise League Women Writers' Suffrage League