Theatre History Studies is a peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-American Theatre Conference (MATC), a regional body devoted to theatre scholarship and practice.

The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre:Europe covers theatre since World War II in forty-seven European nations, including the nations which re-emerged following the break-up of the former USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Each national article is divided into twelve sections - History, Structure of the National Theatre Community, Artistic Profile, Music Theatre, Theatre for Young Audiences, Puppet Theatre, Design, Theatre, Space and Architecture, Training, Criticism, Scholarship and Publishing and Further Reading - allowing the reader to use the book as a source for both area and subject studies.

Featuring innovative research by emergent and established scholars, The Fin-de-Siecle Poem throws new light on the remarkable diversity of poetry produced at the close of the nineteenth century in England. Opening with a detailed preface that shows why literary historians have frequently underrated fin-de-siecle poetry, the collection explains how a strikingly rich body of lyrical and narrative poems anticipated many of the developments traditionally attributed to Modernism. Each chapter in turn provides insights into the ways in which late-nineteenth-century poets represented their experiences of the city, their attitudes toward sexuality, their responses to empire, and their interest in religious belief. The eleven essays presented by editor Joseph Bristow pay renewed attention to the achievements of such legendary writers as Oscar Wilde, John Davidson, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and W.B. Yeats, whose careers have always been associated with the 1890s. This book also explores the lesser-known but equally significant advances made by notable women poets, including Michael Field, Amy Levy, Charlotte Mew, Alice Meynell, A. Mary F. Robinson, and Graham R. Tomson. The Fin-de-Siecle Poem brings together innovative research on poetry that has been typecast as the attenuated Victorianism that was rejected by Modernism. The contributors underscore the remarkable innovations made in English poetry of the 1880s and 1890s and show how woman poets stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their better-known male contemporaries.Joseph Bristow is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he edits the journal Nineteenth-Century Literature. His recent books include The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry, Oscar Wilde: Contextual Conditions, and the variorum edition of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Nobel Laureate George Bernard Shaw remains one of the world's most important and popular writers. His plays are regularly performed around the world, from the boards of Broadway and the West End to regional, community, and college stages.The three plays selected here are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre:Man and Superman: a four-act comedy for serious people, staged in part at Royal court in 1905, it is one of the early works of Modernism to take an ancient myth and restage it in contemporary mode (and its influence extends across world literature, palpable in writings from Mann to Joyce). Its storyof how a sensitive woman compels a superman-figure to adjust to her needs and those of the real world provides an updated commentary on Nietzsche's still-fashionable notions of ubermensch; and its famous third act introduces a persistent Shavian theme, which goes back as far as earliest religiousliterature-that the truly damned are those who are happy in hell.John Bull's Other Island takes up that idea: to the visionary, hell may be the ultimate modern dream of efficiency and rational administration, as manifested in a colonial Ireland run by liberal exploiters. Commissioned by WB Yeats to mark the opening of Ireland's National Theatre, the Abbey, theplay was promptly refused by its Directors (who disliked its mechanical mockeries of mechanism but may have missed its visionary qualities). It was performed to huge acclaim in London in November 1904 and it made Shaw famous, the supreme example of the Playwright as Thinker and, ever afterwards,one of the most valued commentators on Anglo-Irish relations.Major Barbara: a three-act drama which in classic Shavian style unmasks the motivation of puritan idealists and dedicated industrialists, this work (like the previous two) pits a strong woman against a sardonic, practical man. Having exposed the mendacity of apostles of efficiency, Shaw seems thento submit to their doctrine, arguing that a pure private charity towards the destitute is no adequate substitute. Like the previous two works, this is a problem play, in the course of which the audience sympathy is aroused and then repelled in all directions. The suggestion that it may be acceptableto take money from tainted sources, such as arms manufacturers, caused much debate in 1905 - and even more after the carnage wrought by mechanized guns in World War One.