In the nineteenth century, Shakespeare achieved the status of international pre-eminence that we recognize today. He and his major characters were depicted in statues, paintings and illustrations, and in Stratford-upon-Avon the house where he was born was purchased for the nation and the first Memorial Theatre was built. His words were read, quoted and declaimed in domestic drawing rooms and theatres all around the world, as well as in the works of the leading writers of the day, in intimate love letters and in the pages of radical newspapers. As these new essays show, his was a voice that...

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.

Collected here are the biographies which revealed aspects of their subjects that the more favourable "official" accounts tended to hide. The life of the author of each text is described, and their relation to the writers they portray is sketched in.

Extracts from diaries, memoirs, private letters, obituaries and other rare ephemera are drawn together to build a contemporary account of the acting achievements and personal lives of three inspiring figures from the late nineteenth-century theatre; Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.