Bloody tyrants and little pickles: stage roles of Anglo-American girls in the nineteenth century

"Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles: Anglo-American Girls on Nineteenth-century Stages traces the theatrical repertoire of a small group of white Anglo-American actresses as they reshaped the meanings of girlhood in Britain, North America, and the British West Indies during the first half of the nineteenth century.

It is a study of the possibilities and the problems girl performers presented as they adopted the manners and clothing of boys, entered spaces intended for adults, and assumed characters written for men.

It asks why roles like Young Norval, Richard III, Little Pickle, and Shylock came to seem "normal" and "natural" for young white girls to play and it considers how playwrights, managers, critics, and audiences sought to contain or fix the at-times dangerous plasticity they exhibited both on and offstage.

Starting with but looking beyond the metropole of London where they first performed, this book follows little white girls as