Reflecting the Audience

London theatregoing, 1840-1880

Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow

Reflecting the Audience won the Theatre Book Prize for 2001

"One of the best, most interesting, and most useful studies of the Victorian theatre that I have seen"
Joseph Donohue, Professor of English, University of Massachusetts

This innovative work fills a gap in theatre studies: the lack of any comprehensive study of nineteenth-century theatre audiences. It focuses on London from immediately prior to the deregulation of theatres up to the time when the Metropolitan Board of Works assumed responsibility for their licensing. The authors examine the composition of Victorian London’s theatre audiences, their behaviour and their attendance patterns by looking at topography, social demography, police reports, playbills, autobiographies and diaries, newspaper accounts, and the managerial policies of each theatre.

ISBN 978-1-902806-18-1

November 2001, 316pp

Paperback £14.99