List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Prelude. Early modern historiography; 1. Restoration booksellers as theatre historians; 2. Trivial discourses and persons not worth remembering; 3. Gerard Langbaine and his progeny; 4. John Downes and what the prompter saw; 5. The biography of Biographia Dramatica; Interlude. The rise of narrative historiography; 6. The design of Theatrum Anglicanum; 7. Histories of my own time; 8. Edmond Malone and the search for theatrical intelligence; 9. The anxieties of John Payne Collier; Postlude. The art and science of nineteenth-century historiography; Bibliography; Index.