The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737-1843
Conference
A two-day conference on ‘The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737-1843’ was held at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California on 12-13 January 2018. The conference was convened by David O’Shaughnessy and generously funded by the Huntington Library.
This conference focused on the issues raised by the Huntington’s Larpent Collection, the most important manuscript archive in the world for the study of eighteenth-century British theatre, and put that collection in dialogue with the most important collection of theatre manuscripts for the nineteenth century: the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays in the British Library. Speakers offered papers that discuss the discourses and practices of censorship in the period 1737-1843 by putting a selection of plays into their political and cultural context. What were the cultural, economic, and political forces that shaped the practice of State censorship? How might we understand the relationship between, and the relative importance of, formal and informal censorship across the period?
The conference speakers were: Julie Carlson (University of California, Santa Barbara); Jim Davis (University of Warwick); Matthew Kinservik (University of Delaware); Thomas Lockwood (University of Washington); Kate Newey (University of Exeter); Daniel O’Quinn (University of Guelph); Bridget Orr (Vanderbilt University); David O’Shaughnessy (Trinity College Dublin); Gillian Russell (University of Melbourne); Kristina Straub (Carnegie Mellon University); and, David Francis Taylor (University of Warwick).
The convener and the speakers would like to thank the Huntington Library team—Juan Gomez, Steve Hindle, Carolyn Powell, and Catherine Wehrey-Miller—for their professional facilitation and generous hospitality during this conference.
The Censorship of Eighteenth-Century Theatre: Playhouses and Prohibition, 1737-1843, a volume of essays emerging from the conference, is in preparation with Cambridge University Press. For further information contact David O’Shaughnessy (david.oshaughnessy@nuigalway.ie)
