Julie Holledge reconstructs the lives of women working in the Edwardian theatre at the point where performance, feminism and public politics began to overlap.

Actresses were among the most visible women in Britain, but that visibility was double-edged: they could command audiences and incomes while still being treated as morally suspect, sexually available or socially unserious. Holledge follows how they negotiated marriage, reputation, professional independence and the demand to remain decorative even while becoming politically dangerous.

The book’s centre is the Actresses’ Franchise League and the use of theatre within the suffrage movement. Holledge shows actresses organising demonstrations, fundraising, writing and performing political plays, and using their public personas as tools of agitation. It also includes three plays, making this both a social history and a small archive of feminist performance. A sharp study of women discovering that the stage could be more than a workplace: it could be infrastructure for revolt.

Virago Press paperback, 1981 first edition. Light rubbing, edgewear and creasing; pages evenly age-toned, binding sound.