Books in the British and American Playwrights 15 Volume Paperback Set series

The American playwright and actor William Gillette is best remembered today for the role of Sherlock Holmes that he first created for the stage in 1899 and played for more than thirty years. This volume includes All the Comforts of Home (1890), Secret Service (1895) and Sherlock Holmes (1899).

The American playwright and manager-director Augustin Daly dominated the theatrical scene in the United States during the last half of the nineteenth century. His plays and productions set a new standard for American theatre and exerted a strong influence in England, beginning with a first European tour in 1884 and culminating in the opening of Daly's own theatre in London in 1893.

This volume introduces the works of an important but neglected dramatist, one of the most prolific and popular of the mid-Victorian period. H. J. Byron wrote an enormous number of comedies, burlesques and pantomimes. He invented the characters of Widow Twankay and Buttons, still beloved by modern pantomime audiences.

Harley Granville Barker, one of the most versatile figures in twentieth-century theatre, was the leader of the campaign to reform the English stage in the Edwardian period.

This volume contains four plays by the leading late Victorian and Edwardian playwright Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934). It provides a representative sample of the work of a writer who far outshone his rivals (including both Wilde and Shaw) in his own day.

This edition contains the three most important works of Charles Reade (1814-1884). Reade adapted the social purpose and concern for detail of the realistic novel to the stage. He was much concerned with poverty, the brutality of the prison regime of his time and the abuse of mental asylums.

This edition comprises four of Robertson's most successful comedies: Society (1865), Ours (1866), Caste (1867), and School (1869).

As playwrights David Garrick and George Colman the Elder showed themselves to be practical men of the theatre, providing excellent acting parts and well-constructed scenes capable of provoking laughter in any age.

This volume contains edited texts of five plays by two late eighteenth-century dramatists.

Dion Boucicault, the most popular dramatist of the second half of the nineteenth century, was also one of the most prolific and representative. Irish in origin, he worked and wrote in England and America where for twenty years he led the touring circuit.

This edition includes four plays and one libretto, covering more than twenty years of the dramatist's career.

James Robinson Planche was one of the most prolific and successful of nineteenth-century playwrights. In a career spanning fifty years he wrote over one hundred and eighty pieces of all types, from pantomime and farce to melodrama and opera, for production at a wide range of London theatres.

For this volume George Taylor has edited five plays by two largely forgotten eighteenth-century playwrights, Samuel Foote and Arthur Murphy. The plays are The Minor and The Nabob by Foote and The Citizen, Three Weeks after Marriage and Know Your Own Mind by Murphy.

Tom Taylor was one of the most successful and popular playwrights of the Victorian theatre. His plays are humorous and theatrically powerful, showing a social concern that was advanced for his times - particularly on matters such as the rehabilitation of criminals and corruption in public life.

By the turn of the century Henry Arthur Jones was among the most prominent British dramatists. This volume contains three of Jones's plays representing the best of his work in different styles: melodrama and society drama. Russell Jackson's full introduction places Jones in the context of late victorian society and theatre.