Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires
Political Performance and Victorian Social Reform

Examining activist performance techniques, this book shows how women and men could deeply influence public life in the nineteenth century.

Tracy C. Davis (Author)

9781009297530, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 June 2023

352 pages
23.7 x 16.1 x 2.5 cm, 0.68 kg

'… a compelling, exhaustively researched and nuanced history of Activism as performance repertoire … This thorough study of a familial community's intervention into liberal politics in Victorian Britain will be of interest to readers from many disciplines, eras and global areas, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the deepest meanings of reform.' Jennifer DeVere Brody, Performance Research

This ambitious study traces the strategies of human rights activists to show how world-changing reform movements were shaped by women and men from modest backgrounds who were deeply attuned to the power of performance. Tracy C. Davis explores 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 important social struggles of the late Georgian and Victorian periods – including abolition, enfranchisement, and anti-genocide - this book reveals how two generations' insights into performance consolidated into activist tactics that persist today. Characterised by a skilful deployment of performance theory alongside deep and wide-ranging historical knowledge, this ground-breaking work demonstrates what 'dramaturgy' can teach us about 'history'.

Introduction: History as Performance History
1. Forms and Increments of Performance
2. Change Making: Incrementalism
3. Bildung: Leveraging Critique to Propel the Precarious into Political Life
4. Combative Pens
5. Experiments in Becoming.

Subject Areas: Population & demography [JHBD], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Theatre studies [AN]