After years of critical neglect the eighteenth-century actress has become a ripe field for analysis. In this first full-length study on the subject, Nussbaum covers a significant amount of ground and tackles pressing themes (including religion, nation, class and gender), as well as opening the field for further examination. Her first four chapters are thematically focused on actresses’ involvement in the competitive economy of theatre. Skilfully interweaving analysis of a breadth of biographical source materials with literary analysis of plays and understandings of the economic context in which these women worked, the author offers a compelling argument for the ways in which theatrical economics disrupted simple stagings of femininity.

One of the real delights of the book is the chapter on actresses’ relations with female patrons. Situating the actress within a wider cultural context and demonstrating the visual, auditory and economic contract at work in the relationship with female theatre-goers, this section exemplifies Nussbaum's performative approach at the same time as it serves to highlight the amount of work that remains to be undertaken on understanding actresses both as historic female workers and in relation to a diversity of female contemporaries. From the start, Nussbaum makes clear that this book is not an attempt at a comprehensive survey of the eighteenth-century actress, but rather an attempt to examine ‘exceptional’ women as exemplary of critical issues.

Although the repeated references to a diversity of women, including a number of largely marginalized figures, resists this at points, the final three chapters turn to a more detailed examination of three celebrity figures: Kitty Clive, Peg Woffington and Frances Abington. The discussion of gender and its relation to ideas of nation and religion offers new insights into the reception of Woffington's mid-century travesty performances, whilst embodied value is discussed in relation to both Clive's ‘performative property’ and Abington's manipulation of her image through dress. The focus on actresses as cultural and social agents throughout is wonderfully refreshing and Nussbaum's critical economic analysis breaks into exciting new territory. At points, however, the tendency towards examining the actress in relation to a ‘normative ideal’ of femininity resists the valuable attempt to extricate discussion of the actress from the whore. Arguing convincingly that women became increasingly indispensable to the stage over the course of the eighteenth century, Nussbaum paints a vivid picture of what she renames as the ‘age of the actress’ (p. 6). Although one may be left desiring some more theoretical depth, in her interweaving economic analysis with a study of theatrical interiority and persona Nussbaum offers a multifaceted demonstration of both how and why these actresses were the first women to achieve social mobility, cultural authority and financial independence.