Main entry:

Kift, Dagmar, 1954- author.

Title & Author:

The Victorian music hall : culture, class, and conflict / Dagmar Kift ; translated by Roy Kift.

Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Description:

x, 244 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes:
Updated and revised translation of: Arbeiterkultur im gesellschaftlichen Konflikt.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-236) and index.
PT. I: THE ENGLISH MUSIC HALL -- 1. History -- 2. The music-hall programme -- 3. The audience -- PT. II. CULTURES IN CONFLICT -- 4. 1840-1865 : rivalry in leisure -- 5. 1860-1877 : the 'demon drink' -- 6. 1875-1888 : programmes and purifiers -- 7. The special case of London, 1840-1888 -- 8. Controversies in the 1890s.
Current Copyright Fee: GBP25.00 0.
Translation of: Arbeiterkultur im gesellschaftlichen Konflikt.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

With the exception of the occasional local case study, music-hall history has until now been presented as the history of the London halls. This book attempts to redress the balance by setting music-hall history within a national perspective. Kift also sheds a new light on the roles of managements, performers and audiences. For example, the author confutes the commonly held assumption that most women in the halls were prostitutes and shows them to have been working women accompanied by workmates of both sexes or by their families. She argues that before the 1890s the halls catered predominantly to working-class and lower middle-class audiences of men and women of all ages and were instrumental in giving them a strong and self-confident identity. The hall's ability to sustain a distinct class-awareness was one of their greatest strengths - but this factor was also at the root of many of the controversies which surrounded them.
These controversies are at the centre of the book and Kift treats them as test cases for social relations which provide fresh insights into nineteenth-century British society and politics.

Resources:
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0521474728 (hbk.)
9780521474726 (hbk.)

Subject:

Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.) Great Britain History 19th century.
Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.)
Music hall
Music-halls.
Variété.
Victoriaanse tijd.
Music-halls Grande-Bretagne 19e siècle.
Great Britain
Großbritannien
Variety shows History

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Kift, Roy, translator.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 134843
Call No.: ID PN1968.G7.K53; ID:97-B572
Status: Available