It is a generally accepted fact that in the first half of the nineteenth century, Catherine Gore became the most prolific, if not most popular writer of fashionable novels in England. It is less well known that Mrs. Gore's 200-volume output included eleven extremely popular, if not always critically successful, plays, performed at all three of the Theatres Royal in London: Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket. While several of the plays held the stage in England and the United States well into the second half of the nineteenth century, modern critical appraisals of the works have been hampered by the lack of available texts. Gore on Stage, for the first time provides performance texts of all of Mrs. Gore's work for the stage, including original cast lists, criticial responses, illustrations, and glossaries of foreign words and nineteenth-century jargon. Students of drama and nineteenth-century literature will delight in the intricacies of plot and theatrical effects in this collection of historical melodramas, comedies of manners, and farces; and they will marvel at the contemporary nature of the plays' themes, trading on a balance of power between male and female characters.
