Performance and print culture: two 18 century actresses and their attempts at image control
- Submitting institution
-
Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_C1004
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
-
-
- Book title
- Pen, print and communication in the eighteenth century
- Publisher
- Liverpool University Press
- ISBN
- 978-1-789-62230-0
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/53166/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter develops a paper delivered at the ‘Beauty of Letters’ conference, (Baskerville Society, Birmingham, 2015). It is part of an edited volume that provides an original narrative on the nature of eighteenth-century communication and brings fresh perspectives to print culture and the literate society of the Enlightenment.
The researcher’s chapter focusses on two actresses—Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson—who were both the subjects of much press attention, in order to bring new understanding to how the eighteenth-century press reported female ‘celebrities’ in the public eye. Through an analysis of contemporary press reports, combined with recent scholarship on eighteenth-century societal control of women, this chapter demonstrates how the press used innovative forms of journalism in order to highlight women who challenged prevailing views of women as the centre of familial domesticity. It also reveals how press reporting of these two actresses moved from simple descriptions of their activities to overtly criticising their position in society.
As public figures Sidons and Robinson were in a position to challenge the press reporting. This chapter, therefore, also discusses how the two women navigated the press. Their responses, contextualised against details of their careers, behaviour, and life-style, provides new insight into how the eighteenth-century press presented women in the public eye. Connecting the conduct of the print media with the biography of the two women enables the extrapolation of new detail on the relationship between female performers and the lens through which their audience viewed them, created by developments in press reporting.
Alongside increasing our understanding of the eighteenth-century press, this chapter provides a valuable point of reference for the growing interest in the lives of contemporary actresses as women in the public eye, and knowledge of the cultural position of the theatre during the Enlightenment.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
