Women's Contribution to Nineteenth-Century American Theatre

Abstract

Most scholars of American drama and theatre acknowledge that women's contributions to the field, especially those prior to the twentieth century, have been underrepresented. Over the past twenty-five years, scholars have begun to address a number of those glaring omissions. Women in American Theatre (New York: Crown, 1981; rev, and exp,, New York: TCG, 1987), edited by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins, fired the first resounding salvo, addressing an enormous range of material. Faye Dudden's outstanding Women in the American Theatre: Actresses & Audiences, 1790–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) provided a more focused study and insight into countless previously unknown figures. Amelia Howe Kritzer's Plays by Early American Women, 1775–1850 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995) brought to the surface many plays and dramatists never before anthologized.