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Staged Readings: Contesting Class in Popular American Theater and Literature, 1835-75
Michael D'Alessandro
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Staged Readings studies the social consequences of 19th-century America's two most prevalent leisure forms: theater and popular literature. In the midst of watershed historical developments—including numerous waves of immigration, two financial Panics, increasing wealth disparities, and the Civil War—American theater and literature were developing at unprecedented rates. Playhouses became crowded with new spectators, best-selling novels flew off the shelves, and, all the while, distinct social classes began to emerge. While the middle and upper classes were espousing conservative literary tastes and attending family matinees and operas, laborers were reading dime novels and watching downtown spectacle melodramas like Nymphs of the Red Sea and The Pirate's Signal or, The Bridge of Death!!! As audiences traveled from the reading parlor to the playhouse (and back again), they accumulated a vital sense of social place in the new nation. In other words, culture made class in 19th-century America.
Based in the historical archive, Staged Readings presents a panoramic display of mid-century leisure and entertainment. It examines best-selling novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and George Lippard's The Quaker City. But it also analyzes a series of sensational melodramas, parlor theatricals, doomsday speeches, tableaux vivant displays, curiosity museum exhibits, and fake volcano explosions. These oft-overlooked spectacles capitalized on consumers' previous cultural encounters and directed their social identifications. The book will be particularly appealing to those interested in histories of popular theater, literature and reading, social class, and mass culture.
Fig. 2. F. O. C. Darley’s frontispiece illustration, from George Lippard, The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall: A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime (Philadelphia: Published by the Author, 1845). The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Fig. 3. Playbill for The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall, Chestnut Street Theatre, November 11, 1841. Reproduced with permission from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. (Note: the playbill has been split into two parts for legibility.)
Fig. 4. Image of a newsboy at New York’s Chatham Theatre. The text on his ticket name-checks the famous melodrama actor James Kirby, known for his exaggerated death scenes. From “The News-Boy in the Pit of the Chatham Theatre,” Rural Repository (Hudson, NY), May 23, 1846. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.
Fig. 5. Kimball’s first Boston Museum, ca. 1841–1846. Engraving by Abel Bowen. From William Henry Whitmore, Abel Bowen (Boston: Old State House, 1887). Courtesy Widener Library, Harvard University.
Fig. 6. “Interior View of the Lecture Room,” Barnum’s American Museum. Wood engraving by Samuel Putnam Avery, art by John Reuben Chapin. Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, January 29, 1853. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, New York Public Library.
Figs. 7 and 8. “The Drunkard’s Home” (top) and “The Temperance Home” (bottom). Art by T. H. Matteson. From The National Temperance Offering, and the Sons and Daughters of Temperance Gift, ed. S[amuel] Fenton. The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Figs. 7 and 8. “The Drunkard’s Home” (top) and “The Temperance Home” (bottom). Art by T. H. Matteson. From The National Temperance Offering, and the Sons and Daughters of Temperance Gift, ed. S[amuel] Fenton. The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Fig. 9. Hannah Hawkins begs her father not to send her to fetch whiskey for him. Frontispiece illustration for Reverend John Marsh, Hannah Hawkins, The Reformed Drunkard’s Daughter (New York: American Temperance Union. Piercy and Reed, Printers, 1844). The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Fig. 10. Frontispiece illustration for A Long Voyage in a Leaky Ship; or a Forty Years’ Cruise on the Sea of Intemperance (Cambridgeport, MA: P. L. & H. S. Cox, 1842). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.
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