Victorian Writers and the Stage

"This book comprises a study of the plays of Dickens, Browning, Wilkie Collins and Tennyson, alongside the fiction and periodical writings of Thackeray and others. These major Victorian writers authored several professional plays, but why has their achievement been overlooked? Victorian Writers and the Stage brings together comprehensively, for the first time, the professionally performed plays of a group of well-known authors - some of which plays enjoyed long and successful seasons, but all of which have been largely forgotten. The author examines the goal of these writers to become part of an expanding theatrical industry and the problems they encountered in risking their reputations on a literature felt by many to be vulgar and illegitimate. A wealth of new detail carefully positions the plays within the context of the changing Victorian theatre industry and the great battle between the Major and Minor theatres for the future of the modern stage"--