Lunchtime Lecture: The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage

Join expert curators and inspiring speakers for our free weekly lunchtime lectures.

+44 (0)20 7942 2000
  • V&A South Kensington

    Cromwell Road
    London, SW7 2RL

  • The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre

  • Free event

Lunchtime Lecture: The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage photo

The actress was an important figure for the relationship between women and the public world in the Victorian era. Renata Kobetts Miller will discuss her book 'The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage', which examines how the Victorians understood the actress in relation to ideas about audiences, authenticity, sympathy, social class, and the home. She will describe her research in the V&A Theatre and Performance Archives and how this collection contributes to our understanding of Victorian culture, helping us to put novels by William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, George Moore, and Henry James in dialogue with plays by Dion Boucicault, Tom Taylor and Charles Reade, T. W. Robertson, and Elizabeth Robins. Renata Miller is Professor of English and Deputy Dean of Humanities and the Arts at the City College of New York

Visit our SoundCloud channel to listen to past Lunchtime Lectures: soundcloud.com/vamuseum/sets/v-a-lunchtime-lecture-series