Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires: Political Performance and Victorian Social Reform

This book explores how two generations of activists used performance to shape world-changing reform movements in the late Georgian and Victorian periods, including abolition, enfranchisement, and anti-genocide. It demonstrates the power of performance to consolidate insights into activist tactics that persist today.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 01 June 2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

This ambitious study delves into the strategies employed by human rights activists to illustrate how transformative reform movements were shaped by both women and men from humble backgrounds, who possessed a profound understanding of the power of performance. Tracy C. Davis examines nineteenth-century reform campaigns through the pioneering work of a family of activists: prominent anti-slavery lecturer George Thompson, his daughter Amelia (the first female theatre and music critic for a British daily newspaper), and her husband, the political organizer Frederick Chesson. Engaging in some of the most significant social struggles of the late Georgian and Victorian periods, including abolition, enfranchisement, and anti-genocide, this book unveils how two generations of insights into performance converged into activist tactics that continue to resonate today. Characterized by a skillful deployment of performance theory alongside extensive historical knowledge, this groundbreaking work demonstrates the profound lessons that dramaturgy can impart about history.

Weight: 684g
Dimension: 236 x 160 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781009297530