The American Stage: Writing on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner

Edited by Laurence Senelick

Editor Senelick (recipient of the George Jean Nathan Prize for dramatic criticism) has done an excellent job of selecting a wide-ranging, historically significant selection of theater reviews, essays, memoirs, diary entries, and criticism. Extending through time with pieces by such recognizable writers as Washington Irving, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain, as well as Henry Louis Gates, Susan Sontag, and Tony Kushner, this collection also includes lesser-known writers such as Olive Logan, who wrote "About Nudity in the Theatre" in 1866, and Congregational minister Rollin Lynde Hartt, who discusses melodrama as a positive benefit to the working class and its new found leisure. Many of the writings included here can be found only in volumes that are not indexed and are housed in archives and rare-book collections. This is not a documentary history or a survey of American theater and therefore stands somewhat alone on the theater studies shelf. Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here, and readers who love theater as well as history will be entertained for many hours.

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