Acts of Desire

From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women and streetwalkers, the so-called ''fallen woman'' was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. Acts of Desire traces the theatrical representation of illicit female sexuality from early nineteenth-century melodramas, through sensation dramas, Ibsenite sex-problem plays and suffrage dramas, to...