Introducing Charlotte Charke : actress, author, enigma / edited by Philip E. Baruth ; afterword by Felicity A. Nussbaum.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Baruth, Philip E. (Philip Edward)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Charke, Charlotte, 1713-1760--Criticism and interpretation.

Charke, Charlotte.

Charke, Charlotte, 1713-1760.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

viii, 250 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1998]

Summary:

The "notorious troublemaker" Charlotte Charke worked as a novelist, autobiographer, and strolling actress. But it was as a cross-dresser -- both on stage and off -- that she scandalized eighteenth-century England. Known as "Mr. Charles Brown", she lived openly with another woman for nearly a decade.

Charke, daughter of Colley Cibber, the English playwright and poet laureate (1740), lived a life of masquerade. Her autobiography is a fascinating document of low- and middle-class life in the 1700s and is explored in some detail by Philip E. Baruth. Other contributors to this collection look at Charke, her famous family, and her place within stage and cross-dressing traditions. Felicity A. Nussbaum provides a thought-provoking afterword on the current state of Charke criticism.

Contents:

Introduction / Philip E. Baruth

Who is Charlotte Charke? / Philip E. Baruth

Charlotte Charke and the Cibbers: private life as public spectacle / Jean Marsden

The transgressive daughter and the masquerade of self-representation / Sidonie Smith

The guilty pleasures of female theatrical cross-dressing and the autobiography of Charlotte Charke / Kristina Straub

Charlotte Charke: images and afterimages / Robert Folkenflik

Teaching Charlotte Charke: feminism, pedagogy, and the construction of the self / Madeleine Kahn

"A masculine turn of mind": Charlotte Charke and the periodical press / Hans Turley

Turning to men: genres of cross-dressing in Charke's Narrative and Shakespeare's The merchant of Venice / Joseph Chaney

Afterword: Charke's "variety of wretchedness" / Felicity A. Nussbaum.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

025202415X

0252067231

OCLC:

38257838