Theatre has always been a site for selling outrage and sensation, a place where public reputations are made and destroyed in spectacular ways. This is the first book to investigate the construction and production of celebrity in the British theatre. These exciting essays explore aspects of fame, notoriety and transgression in a wide range of performers and playwrights including David Garrick, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Laurence Olivier and Sarah Kane. This pioneering volume examines the ingenious ways in which these stars have negotiated their own fame. The essays also analyze the complex relationships between discourses of celebrity and questions of gender, spectatorship and the operation of cultural markets.

'There is not a weak link in the book. A compelling setof case studies intriguingly sets out much that nuances understanding of the kinds of figures who exert more attention now than perhaps ever before.' - Modernism/Modernity

'A fascinating collection of essays that invites us to compare theatrical personalities of different ages, and wonder what makes these people, of all those who are professionally involved in the creation of fictional personae for public consumption, special.' - Times Literary Supplement

'The essays collected here...make a valuable contribution to understanding the history of a phenomenon that, while it has only recently started to receive serious attention, has clearly been with us for some time.' Tom Mole, Theatre Notebook

JACKY BRATTON Professor of Theatre and Cultural History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK SOS ELTIS Fellow and Tutor in English at Brasenose College, Oxford, UK MAGGIE B.GALE Professor of Drama at the University of Manchester, UK PETER HOLLAND McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, UK FELICITY NUSSBAUM is Professor in the Department of English at the University of California at Los Angeles, USA PETER RABY is a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge, UK JOSEPH ROACH is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dielley Professor of Theatre and English at Yale University, USA PETER THOMSON is Emiritus Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter, UK SHEARER WEST is Professor of Art History at the University of Birmingham, UK.