Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part II:

Edmund Kean, Sarah Siddons and Harriet Smithson by their Contemporaries

This series features actors who were significant in their development of new and innovative ways of performing Shakespeare. Extracts from diaries, memoirs, private letters, obituaries and other rare ephemera are drawn together to build a contemporary account of their acting achievements and personal lives.

Edmund Kean has been considered one of the greatest actors to have taken to the stage. His debut at Drury Lane brought the theatre renewed popularity and rescued it from near bankruptcy. He specialized in tragic roles which brought him success on both the English and American stage. Sarah Siddon was famed for her consummate performance of Lady Macbeth. Her achievements include bringing a new standard of performative realism to the stage. Harriet Smithson was best known for her Parisian performances. Her success brought greater attention to the role of women on the Shakespearian stage. Between them these actors helped to make the stage a more respectable profession.

This edition draws together a carefully-edited selection of the actors’ own words with those of their contemporaries and critics. Texts are presented in digitally-enhanced facsimile and are supported by extensive new editorial material including a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes, endnotes, a bibliography, a chronology and a consolidated index.

This broadly interdisciplinary edition will interest scholars undertaking research in Shakespearian Studies, History of the Theatre and Performance and Eighteenth-Century Studies

• Makes available a comprehensive selection of rare and difficult-to-access contemporary texts on the reception and reputation of three key eighteenth-century Shakespearian actors

• Enables consideration of key points of English acting style, performance and tradition on the Shakespearian stage

• Each facsimile page is digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original

Contents

Volume 1: Edmund Kean

William Robson, The Old Playgoer; Crabb Robinson, Reminiscences (1814); Crabb Robinson, Diary (1814-1827); G H Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting; Evidence to Select Committee; Dr Francis of New York ‘Old New York'; R C Leslie Autobiography; F Reynolds; T C Grattan My Acquaintance with the late Edmund Kean (1833); Life of C M Young; Quarterly Review (1835); Miss Berry’s Journal (1813); New Monthly Magazine 1833; Blackwoods Magazine (1840); Life of EllistonI; Michael Kelly, Reminiscences; W C Maxcready Reminiscences; Barry Conrwall; European Magazine (1814); Thos Moore, Life of Byron; Washington Irving, Life & Letter; Gabriel Harrison, Payne; George Vandenhoff, ‘Leaves…’; James H Hackett, New York Mirror (1834); Helena Faucit ‘On some of….’; Joe Cowell, ‘Thirty Years…'; 'Review of Edmund Kean as Richard III', The Champion (1814); 'Review of Edmund Kean as Macbeth', The Champion (1814); 'Review of Edmund Kean as Romeo', The Champion (1815); 'Review of Edmund Kean as Iago', The Examiner (1814); 'Review of Edmund Kean as Richard II', The Examiner (1815); 'Review of Edmund Kean as Coriolanus', London Magazine (1820); 'Review of Edmund Kean as King Lear', London Magazine (1820); Leigh Hunt, 'Review of Edmund Kean as Richard III', Tatler (1831); Leigh Hunt, 'Review of Edmund Kean as Othello', Tatler (1831)

Volume 2: Sarah Siddons

Anon., The Beauties of Mrs Siddons, (1786); Anon [James Henry Leigh], The New Rosciad (1787); Anon., Edwin’s Pills to Purge Melancholy With an Humourous Account of Mrs Siddons’s first Reception in Dublin (1788); Anon., The Theatrical Portrait: A Poem, On the Celebrated Mrs Siddons, In the Characters of Calista, Jane Shore, Belvidera, and Isabella (1783); Joanna Baillie, ‘To Mrs Siddons’, A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, and from Living Authors (1823); James Ballantyne, Dramatic Characters of Mrs Siddons (1812); George Joseph Bell, ‘Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth’, The Nineteenth Century (1878); James Boaden, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble (1825); James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Siddons (1827); James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald (1833); Frances Burney (Madame D’Arblay), Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay (1842–46); Thomas Campbell, Life of Mrs Siddons (1834); Thomas Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies (1785); ‘Drury-Lane Theatre’, Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (1785); Percy Fitzgerald, The Kembles (1871); Catherine Galindo, Mrs Galindo’s Letter to Mrs Siddons (1809); Joseph Haslewood, The Secret History of the Green-Room (1795); William Hazlitt, A View of the English Stage (1821); Frances Ann Kemble, Record of Girlhood (1878); Oswald Knapp, An Artist’s Love Story (1905); William Russell, The Tragic Muse: A Poem Addressed to Mrs Siddons (1783); ‘Mrs Siddons’, Morning Chronicle (1812); ‘The Stage’, Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (1785); Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, Verses Addressed to Mrs. Siddons, on Her Being Engaged at the Theatre-Royal (1782); Thomas Young, The Siddoniad (1784)

Volume 3: Harriet Smithson

Memoir of Miss H C Smithson (1825); Alexandre Dumas, Mes Memoires; E Delecluze Journal; Gazette Musicale (1834); Letters of Countess Granville to the Duke of Devonshire; M Moreau, Souvenirs du Theâtre Anglais à Paris; Mrs Baron Wilson, Our Actresses; E P Dutton Cook, Gentleman's Magazine (1879); Jules Janin, Journal des Débats; Reviews of Harriet Smithson in: Bell's Weekly Messenger, Corsaire, Courrier, The Examiner, The Globe, Journal des Débats, Literary Chronicle, London Magazine, New Monthly Magazine, Quotidien, Theatrical Observer, The Times, Weekly Review

Related titles

• The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald
• Women's Theatrical Memoirs

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