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Victorian Figurative Painting: Domestic Life and the Contemporary Social Scene, and: Victorian Narrative Painting (review)

SPRING 2002 calling into question the motives of each through sexual innuendo and jibes. When Marie Wilton married Squire Bancroft, they were only partially successful at reconfiguring their public image into bourgeois respectability. Davis concludes that the consolidation of theatrical empires at the end of the nineteenth century shut women out of managerial positions. Men raised money through contacts that were often gained at exclusive allmale clubs and similar places closed to women. Not surprisingly, women pioneered in non-profit theatre venues, finding leadership and managerial outlets in fund-raising for the Old Vic (Emma Cons) or the Dublin Abbey Theatre (Annie Horniman). A short review cannot do justice to the depth and complexity of material presented in this book. Davis has mastered traditional, Victorian economic theory, and used it as the backbone for her interpretative strategies. She considers economic models of social change, industrial organization, and industrial growth. Some readers will find this hard going. I’m not sure that she needs this theoretical structure, but it makes her arguments about the economic assumptions and behaviors of theatre entrepreneurs, managers, and producers convincing. Moreover, Davis remains in active dialogue with business historians, demonstrating the importance of culture to any understanding of economic growth; she also works hard to make these arguments accessible, indeed, vital, to theatre historians who have for too long focused on the history of performance or of the acting profession. Davis documents brilliantly how the theatre moved from its precarious economic status in eighteenth-century England to its present position at the heart of British culture, tourism, and urban economics. The economics of the theatre, from the initial purchase of desirable, centrally located property to the costs of modernization and safety measures to the conception and production of elaborately staged productions, demonstrates the shift from cultural and economic marginality to centrality during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The result is an impressive analysis of the multifarious elements that make live theatre possible. Her work both defines and leads the way to important new perspectives on the Victorian stage. Martha Vicinus University of Michigan