Sir Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving

Author: Jeffrey Richards

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2005-12-16

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 9781852853457

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sir Henry Irving was the greatest actor of the Victorian age. He transformed the theater in Britain and America from a disreputable and marginal entertainment into a respected art form. His admirers ranged from Queen Victoria to working men and housewives. He was thought of by Gladstone as his greatest contemporary and in 1895 became the first actor to receive a knighthood. Published to mark the centenary of Irving’s death, this book gives an account not only of Irving himself and of his career, but also of his whole impact on the Victorian Theatre and on Victorian culture.

Sir Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving

Author: Jeffrey Richards

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2007-01-20

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 9781852855918

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sir Henry Irving was the greatest actor of the Victorian age and was thought of by Gladstone as his greatest contemporary. He transformed the theatre, in Britain and America, from a disreputable and marginal entertainment into a respected and uplifting art form. This work gives an account of Irving and his impact on the Victorian theatre and life.

A Strange Eventful History
A Strange Eventful History

Author: Michael Holroyd

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2010-03-02

Total Pages: 772

ISBN-13: 1429939044

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Bram Stoker And The Man Who Was Dracula
Bram Stoker And The Man Who Was Dracula

Author: Barbara Belford

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2002-02-07

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780306810985

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"What a splendid subject to sink one's teeth into," raved the Washington Post. Here was a six-foot-two Irishman with a red beard—a Victorian family man, a spirited debater, and the author of novels and short stories largely forgotten today. All, of course, except for Dracula, which has enjoyed countless stage and screen incarnations and haunted the dreams of many generations. Bram Stoker lived at the very center of late-Victorian social and artistic life and numbered among his friends Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Whistler, William Gladstone, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. But it was his relationship with the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving that may have played the most crucial role in Stoker's life—a real-life monster who ultimately led to Stoker's most famous creation. In this book that the Baltimore Sun called "superb," Barbara Belford draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the links between the reticent author's life, his vampire tale, and the political, occult, cultural, and sexual background of the 1890s.

Shadowplay
Shadowplay

Author: Joseph O'Connor

Publisher: Europa Editions

Published: 2020-06-16

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1609455940

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A West End theater in London is shaken up by the crimes of Jack the Ripper in this novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Star of the Sea. Henry Irving is Victorian London’s most celebrated actor and theater impresario. He has introduced groundbreaking ideas to the theater, bringing to the stage performances that are spectacular, shocking, and always entertaining. When Irving decides to open his own London theater with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Bram Stoker to manage it. As Irving’s theater grows in reputation and financial solvency, he lures to his company of mummers the century’s most beloved actress, the dazzlingly talented leading lady Ellen Terry, who nightly casts a spell not only on her audiences but also on Stoker and Irving both. Bram Stoker’s extraordinary experiences at the Lyceum Theatre, his early morning walks on the streets of a London terrorized by a serial killer, his long, tempestuous relationship with Irving, and the closeness he finds with Ellen Terry, inspire him to write Dracula, the most iconic and best-selling supernatural tale ever published. A magnificent portrait both of lamp-lit London and of lives and loves enacted on the stage, Shadowplay’s rich prose, incomparable storytelling, and vivid characters will linger in readers’ hearts and minds for many years. “A vibrantly imaginative narrative of passion, intrigue and literary ambition set in the garish heyday of a theater. . . . Artfully splicing truth with fantasy, O’Connor has a glorious time turning a ramshackle and haunted London playhouse into a primary source for Stoker’s Gothic imaginings.” —Miranda Seymour, The New York Times Book Review “A gorgeously written historical novel about Stoker’s inner life. . . . I wasn’t prepared to be awed by his prose, which is so good you can taste it. . . . O’Connor dazzles.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “And Mr. O’Connor’s main characters—Stoker, Irving and the beloved actress Ellen Terry—are so forcefully brought to life that when, close to tears, you reach this drama’s final page, you will return to the beginning just to remain in their company.” —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal “This novel blows the dust off its Victorian trappings and brings them to scintillating life.” —Publishers Weekly, PW Picks, Starred Review FINALIST 2019 COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST 2020 DALKEY LITERARY AWARD 2020 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE