The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage

'Renata K Miller's deeply researched and original book reveals the overlooked centrality of the Victorian actress to representations of women's rebellion in novelists from Dickens to James. In revelatory chapters on George Eliot's depiction of actresses in her fiction and poetry, and the actress as suffrage activist, muse, and feminist inspiration, she rewrites the literary history of the Victorian era.' Elaine Showalter, Princeton University Examines representations of the actress in Victorian novels and theatres This book analyses how Victorian novels and plays used the actress, a significant figure for the relationship between women and the public sphere, to define their own place within and among genres and in relation to audiences. Providing new understandings of how the novel and theatre developed, Miller explores how their representations shaped the position of the actress in Victorian culture with regard to her authenticity, her ability to foster sympathetic bonds, and her relationships to social class and the domestic sphere. The book traces how this cultural history led actresses to appropriate the pen themselves by becoming suffragette playwrights, thereby writing new social roles for women. Renata Kobetts Miller is professor of English and deputy dean of Humanities and the Arts at the City College of New York. Cover image: Ellen Terry with her mother Sarah, photograph by Lewis Carroll, c. 1860s © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-3949-7 Barcode