AM delves into the dynamic world of theatre with The Nineteenth Century Stage: Industry, Performance and Celebrity
This new resource from AM reveals the shifting and expanding world of the nineteenth-century stage. Drawn from eight archives across the UK, USA, and Australia, the material explores topics such as the development of theatres and design innovations, theatre management, costume, and set design.
The content, featuring unique and engaging materials such as the playbills and broadsides used for promotion, allows users to uncover how theatre became a powerful cultural force with insights into iconic figures.
Collections of theatre ephemera highlight the huge expansion of printed and visual resources showing how the audience experienced the stage and how spectacular entertainments drew crowds across the country. The collection also spotlights the emergence of celebrity, and explores the development of theatrical careers with insight into well-known individuals of the day including famous actors and actresses, playwrights, critics, producers and actor managers.
This is a highly visual resource with many photographs, illustrations, and toy theatre prints. With over 120 prompt books from the Folger Shakespeare Library, printed plays and manuscripts, including those of Victorian dramatist Henry Pettit, programmes, playbills and posters, and theatre scrapbooks, it's a treasure trove for researchers of the nineteenth-century stage.
To aid user experience across all levels of research, each document in the collection is tagged from a list of document types which can be easily filtered, as well as tagged with theme or themes to enhance browsing. The broad range of content makes this resource ideal for studying the intersection of performance, literature, and social influence.
To find out more about this resource, visit the collection page.
Recent posts
AM Archives Direct expands its wealth of East Asian material with the release of Foreign Office, Consulate and Legation Files, China: 1830–1939. Drawn exclusively from The National Archives, UK, Section I focuses on Wars and Treaties, 1830–1895, offering a valuable lens into Sino-British diplomacy, trade, and public health.
In this article originally published in Against the Grain, AM's Laura Blomvall explores the University of Hawaiʻi students’ UK research trip, focusing on Hawaiian history and culture. It highlights how digitised archives support accessibility, inclusive metadata, and decolonisation efforts, fostering rich discussions about collaboration, language, and representation in historical records.