LibGuides: Theatre 373: Actors: Books

Searching Primo for Books

When searching with Primo, try these search tips.

Use quote marks around the person's name. Ex. "Edwin Booth"

Sort by relevance if you don't find anything in the first page of results.

In Primo, use the facets on the left side bar to narrow your search to books or articles. Keep in mind that articles are limited and you should also search the databases recommended.

Try a subject search. Some suggestions are below. Copy and paste in the search box.

"Women in the theater -- United States -- History -- 19th century"
"Actresses -- Great Britain -- Biography"
"Actresses -- France -- Biography"
"Actresses United States Biography"
"Actors -- Great Britain - Biography"
"Actors -- United States -- Biography"
"Actors -- France -- Biography"
"Actors -- Italy -- Biography"
"Acting History"
"Theater -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century"
"Theater -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century"
"Theater --United States -- History -- 19th century"
"Theater --United States -- History -- 18th century"
"Theater --France -- History -- 18th century"
"Theater --France -- History -- 19th century"
Theater Europe History 18th century
Theater and society"

Google Books

Use Google Books to search the text of a book.

Social and Cultural History

The Irish Theatre by Christopher Fitz-Simon
Call Number: PR8721 .F5
ISBN: 9780500013007
Publication Date: 1983
The stage controversy in France from Corneille to Rousseau by Moses Barras
Call Number: PN2051.B3 1933
Publication Date: 1933
The Nineteenth Century by Colin Matthew
Call Number: DA533 .N56 2000
ISBN: 9780198731436
Publication Date: 2000
This book sets out to describe the force and complexity of that experience, and to cover, in an interdisciplinary way, the political, economic, and cultural history of the British Isles between 1815 and 1901.
Theater in America by Mary C. Henderson
Call Number: PN2221.H381996
ISBN: 9780810938847
Publication Date: 1996
Mary C. Henderson explores the ever-changing world of the American stage, from the days of strolling players into the modern era of Broadway hits, public funding, and unionization. She evaluates significant trends in playwriting, in the taste of audiences, and in acting theory and practice; analyzes the economic structure of the theater; and traces developments in stagecraft and playhouse design.
The Oxford Handbook of American Drama by Jeffrey H. Richards (Editor); Heather S. Nathans (Editor)
Call Number: Print Books (PS332 .O94 2014 )
ISBN: 9780199731497
Publication Date: 2014-01-08
This ambitious collection of essays will cover American drama in its entirety - from its inception in colonial America, through its many incarnations in the nineteenth century, to its zenith in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Contributors also explore the vibrant drama to emerge during the nineteenth century, when blackface performers and stars such as Edwin Forrest, Charlotte Cushman, and Edwin Booth dominated the stage.
Theatre, Politics, and Markets in Fin-de-Siècle Paris by Sally Debra Charnow
Call Number: Print Books (PN2636.P3 C43 2005 )
ISBN: 9781403970411
Publication Date: 2005-12-13
Theatre, Politics, and Markets in Fin-de-Siecle Paris investigates the dynamic relationships among the avant-garde, official culture and the commercial sphere, arguing against the neat divide of 'high' and 'low' culture by showing how cultural forms of varying social origins influenced each other.
American Eras by Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau (Editor)
Call Number: Print Books (E169.1 .A47197 1997 )
ISBN: 9780787614775
Publication Date: 1997-03-01
America Eras offers insightful essays on events, publications, lifestyles and individuals important to U.S. history, but reviews them in a broader scope of time. Volumes cover the events, lifestyles, social history and key figures unique to each era.
A Companion to 19th-Century America by William Barney
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780631209850
Publication Date: 2001-02-08
A Companion to 19th-Century America is an authoritative overview of current historiographical developments and major themes in the history of nineteenth-century America. Twenty-seven scholars, all specialists in their own thematic areas, examine the key debates and historiography. A thematic and chronological organization brings together the major time periods, politics, the Civil War, economy, and social and cultural history of the nineteenth century.
A Great and Monstrous Thing by Jerry White
Call Number: Print Books (DA682 .W48 2013 )
ISBN: 9780674073173
Publication Date: 2013-02-28
"A Great and Monstrous Thing" offers a street-level view of London: its public gardens and prisons, its banks and brothels, its workshops and warehouses and its bustling, jostling crowds. White introduces us to shopkeepers and prostitutes, men and women of fashion and genius, street-robbers and thief-takers, as they play out the astonishing drama of life in eighteenth-century London. What emerges is a picture of a society fractured by geography, politics, religion, history and especially by class, for the divide between rich and poor in London was never greater or more destructive in the modern era than in these years.
The World of the Salons by Antoine Lilti
Call Number: Print Books (DC33.4 .L5513 2015 )
ISBN: 9780199772346
Publication Date: 2015-01-02
Antoine Lilti proposes a fresh interpretation of salons in eighteenth-century Paris. Drawing on cultural history, social history, and the history of literature, he challenges the commonly accepted vision of salons as literary circles that were part of the Republic of Letters. Lilti argues, instead, that salons were institutions of worldly sociability that helped shape "the world" (le monde) and high society. They were essential places where the aristocratic elites of the capital met and interacted with literary figures.

Books about Actors and Acting

History of the American Stage; containing biographical sketches of nearly every member of the profession that has appeared on the American stage, from 1733 to 1870 by T Allston Brown
Call Number: PN2285.B75
Publication Date: 1969
Famous Actors and Actresses on the American Stage by William C. Young
Call Number: Reference PN2285.Y6 v.1-v.2
ISBN: 9780835208215
Publication Date: 1975
Women on the Stage in Early Modern France, 1540-1750 by Virginia Scott
Call Number: PN2637 .S53 2010
ISBN: 9780521896757
Publication Date: 2010
The book also investigates the ways in which actresses made invaluable contributions to the development of the French theatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and looks at the afterlives' of such women as Armande Bejart, Marquise Du Parc, Charlotte Desmares, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and Hippolyte Clairon in biographies, plays, and films.
Women in the American Theatre by Faye E. Dudden
Call Number: PN1590.W64 D84 1994
ISBN: 9780300056365
Publication Date: 1994
Through a series of vivid biographical sketches of female performers and managers, Faye Dudden provides new insights into the way that women became products in the entertainment marketplace even as they sought increasing freedom in their everyday world.
Notable Women in the American Theatre by Alice M. Robinson (Editor); Milly S. Barranger (Editor); Vera Mowry Roberts (Editor)
Call Number: Reference PN2285 .N65 1989
ISBN: 9780313272172
Publication Date: 1989-12-06
"This reference book has entries for some 300 women in American theater, ranging from actors, directors, choreographers, playwrights, and designers, to critics, agents, and managers.
Rival Queens by Felicity Nussbaum
Call Number: PN2582.W65 N87 2010
ISBN: 9780812242331
Publication Date: 2010
Treating individual star actresses who helped spark a cult of celebrity--especially Anne Oldfield, Susannah Cibber, Catherine Clive, Margaret Woffington, Frances Abington, and George Anne Bellamy--"Rival Queens" reveals the way these women animated issues of national identity, property, patronage, and fashion in the context of their dramatic performances.
Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review by Donald Mullin
Call Number: PN2597 .V5
ISBN: 9780313233166
Publication Date: 1983
"An informative and scholarly survey by Donald Mullin, Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review, compiles extensive critical assessments by contemporary reviewers of some 250 British and American players who performed between 1837 and 1901."
Merely Players by Wagenknecht, Edward
Call Number: PN2205.W28
Publication Date: 1966
Then Came Each Actor by Bernard Grebanier
Call Number: PR3112 .G73
ISBN: 9780679505075
Publication Date: 1975
The English dramatic critics; an anthology, 1660-1932 by James Agate
Call Number: PR627.A6 1958
Publication Date: 1958
Source Book in Theatrical History by A. M. Nagler
Call Number: Print Books (PN2101 .N3 )
ISBN: 9780486205151
Publication Date: 1959-06-01
A rich resource for students of theater and theater historians, this volume features an annotated collection of more than 300 unusually interesting and detailed articles. Passages by contemporary observers from ancient Greece to modern times include notes on acting, directing, make-up, costuming, stage props, machinery, scene design, and much more.
Actors on acting: the theories, techniques, and practices of the great actors of all times as told in their own words by Toby Cole; Helen Krich Chinoy
Call Number: PN2065.C55 1970
Publication Date: 1970
Great primary source!
Actors and Acting in Shakespeare's Time by John H. Astington
Call Number: PN2589 .A88 2010
ISBN: 9780521192507
Publication Date: 2010
John Astington brings the acting style of the Shakespearean period to life, describing and analysing the art of the player in the English professional theatre between Richard Tarlton and Thomas Betterton. The book pays close attention to the cultural context of stage playing, the critical language used about it, and the kinds of training and professional practice employed in the theatre at various times over the course of roughly one hundred years - 1558–1660.
Notes, criticisms, and correspondence upon Shakespeare's plays and actors by James Henry Hackett
Call Number: PR3091.H3 1968
Publication Date: 1968
The Image of the Actor by Shearer West
Call Number: Print Books (PN2061 .W47 1991)
ISBN: 9780312057381
Publication Date: 1991-03-15
This scholarly synthesis questions the literal acceptance of evidence by theater historians in their interpretations of eighteenth-century theatrical portraits, criticism, biography, and theory.
Garrick claims the stage : acting as social emblem in eighteenth-century England by Leigh Woods
Call Number: Print Books (PN2598.G3 W6 )
ISBN: 9780313242595
Publication Date: 1984-06-19
Actio and Persuasion by Angelica Goodden
Call Number: Print Books (PN2633 .G6 1986 )
ISBN: 9780198158363
Publication Date: 1986-04-10
In 18th-century France an intellectual battle was fought to raise the professional status of acting to the level of other arts involving rhetoric and expressive technique. The central strategy was based on the ancient rhetorical notion of actio, a theory of gesture, attitude, and facial expression already employed in the teaching and practice of religious, forensic, and political oratory.
Curtain Calls by Mary Anne Schofield; Cecilia Macheski (Contribution by)
Call Number: Print Books (PN2582.W65 C87 1991 )
ISBN: 9780821409572
Publication Date: 1991-01-01
"I here and there o'heard a Coxcomb cry, Ah, rot--'tis a Woman's Comedy." Thus Aphra Behn ushers in a new era for women in the British Theatre (Sir Patient Fancy, 1678). In the hundred years that were to follow -- and exactly those years that Curtain Calls examines -- women truly took the theater world by storm. For each woman who chose a career in the theater world of the eighteenth century, there is a unique tale of struggle, insult, success, good or bad fortune, disaster, seduction, or fame. Whether acting, writing, reviewing, or stage managing, women played a major, if frequently unacknowledged, role in the history of the theater from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries.
The London stage, 1660-1800; a calendar of plays, entertainments & afterpieces, together with casts, box-receipts and contemporary comment.
Call Number: Print Books (PN1582.G72 L65 )
The London Stage, 1890-1899 by J. P. Wearing
Call Number: Print Books (PN2596.L6 W37 )
ISBN: 9780810809109
Publication Date: 1976-01-01
Wearing lists each production in chronological arrangement of playbills, with full production and contemporary review information for each play, and including comprehensive indexes.
American Theatre Companies, 1749-1887 by Weldon B. Durham
Call Number: Reference (PN2221 .A43 )
ISBN: 9780313208867
Publication Date: 1986-09-15
v. 1. 1749-1887 -- v. 2. 1888-1930
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Performance by Katherine L. Wright
Call Number: PR2831 .W75 1997
ISBN: 0773422846
Publication Date: 1997-01-01
Romeo and Juilet has enjoyed great popularity on the stage from Shakespeare's time onward, but is not a faverouite with literary critics who view it as an immature study for the greater tragedies that would follow. This study seeks to show that acting, directing and stage design are acts of interpretation to be judged alongside the readings of literary scholars. It is a study of selected actors in the play's three main roles.
Actors: George Anne Bellamy
Life-Writings by British Women, 1660-1815 by Carolyn A. Barros (Editor); Johanna M. Smith (Editor)
Call Number: PR1286.W6 L54 2000
ISBN: 1555534325
Publication Date: 2000-06-09
A wide array of documents, many of which have been unavailable since their original publication, is included: memoirs of individual and family life, travel narratives, letters, appeals for funds, testimonies of spiritual conversion, and scandalous memoirs. The writers represented here range from ladies to servants, from spinsters to courtesans, from actresses to poets, from wronged wives to wives of men engaged in British colonization. A comprehensive introduction by the editors explores the material conditions of women's lives in Restoration and eighteenth-century Britain and critically examines the genre of autobiography. Each selection is preceded by an explanatory headnote that places the document in its historical, cultural, and social contexts.
Actors: George Anne Bellamy
Bodies in Dissent by Daphne A. Brooks
Call Number: PN2270.A35 B77 2006
ISBN: 082233710X
Publication Date: 2006-07-18
Daphne A. Brooks argues that from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, black transatlantic activists, actors, singers, and other entertainers frequently transformed the alienating conditions of social and political marginalization into modes of self-actualization through performance. Brooks considers the work of African American, Anglo, and racially ambiguous performers in a range of popular entertainment, including racial melodrama, spectacular theatre, moving panorama exhibitions, Pan-Africanist musicals, Victorian magic shows, religious and secular song, spiritualism, and dance.
Actors: Adah Isaacs Menken
The Actor-Managers by Lady Frances Lonsdale Donaldson
Call Number: PN2597 .D55 1970
Publication Date: 1970
Actors: George Alexander
Great Shakespeare Actors by Stanley Wells
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 0198703295
Publication Date: 2015-06-23
Great Shakespeare Actors offers a series of essays on great Shakespeare actors from his time to ours.