Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

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Helen Grime

Dramatic Lives

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies is a paradox; a famous actress whose career spanned most of the twentieth century, she is now largely forgotten. Her personal story is a journey through a social and cultural landscape in which what it meant to be a woman, an actress and a lesbian shifted enormously. Drawing on material held in her personal archive, this study demonstrates how the career of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, on and off the stage, can be read against the grain of its apparent conventionality. This book reveals a skilled navigator of social and professional networks who excelled in playing with notions of identity and confounded society’s expectations, finally defying all attempts at reductive categorization.

Readership

Twentieth-Century Theatre and Gender Studies

Contents

1 Stories and Myths
2 Actresses and Femininity
3 Sexuality and Discretion
4 Archetypes and Epithets
5 Industry and Diversity
6 Pioneer and Purpose
7 Associations and Ambition
8 Resurrection and Legacy

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• Ellen Terry, Spheres of Influence
• Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part V: Beerbohm Tree, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry by their Contemporaries
• The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry

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