Reading Adaptations: Novels and Verse Narratives on the Stage, 1790-1840

Reading adaptations provides an original introduction to the widespread and popular practice of stage adaptation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a series of specific case studies, the book offers readings of stage versions of works by writers such as William Godwin, Walter Scott and Charles Dickens and establishes important new contexts within which to view the production and reception of the period's canonical literature. The plays engage with the original texts' treatment of issues such as social and political justice, the construction of individual and national identity and the emergence of the professional writer. Adaptations created both a literal and metaphorical site for public debate about a text's meaning and significance and, taken as a whole, the plays discussed within the present study allow a unique insight into the development of modern distinctions between 'literary' and 'popular' culture. The book's argument demonstrates the significance of theatrical adaptation for an improved understanding of the cultural complexity of the Romantic period and rediscovers a fascinating but critically neglected area of literary production. Reading adaptations will be of interest to all lecturers, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students working on the literary or theatrical culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.