This is a comprehensive study of women playwrights in the British theater from 1820 to 1918. It looks at how they negotiated their personal and professional identities as writers, and examines the female tradition of playwriting which dramatizes the central experience of women's lives around the themes of home, the nation, and the position of women in marriage and the family. The book also includes an extensive Appendix of authors and plays.

This collection of essays sets out to challenge the dominant narrative about Victorian theatre by placing the practices and products of the Victorian theatre in relation to Victorian visual culture, through the lens of the concept of 'Ruskinian theatre', an approach to theatre which values its educative purpose as well as its aesthetic expression.

This is the first book to explore the involvement of John Ruskin with the popular theatre of his time. Based on original archival research, this book offers a fresh look at the aesthetic and social theories of Ruskin and his direct and indirect influence on the commercial theatre of the late nineteenth century.