The distinctive value of an edited collection lies in its ability to open up important disciplinary debates from multiple perspectives and by drawing on diverse examples of research. Theatre History and Historiography meets and exceeds these expectations. Each of the eight chapters draws on a distinctive case study to explore broader theoretical, ethical and practical questions about how theatre history – indeed history more broadly (although important points are made about the distinctive aspects of theatre history) – is both practised and disseminated. Geographically and temporally the case studies range across colonial India (Trivedi), nineteenth-century America (Bank), Wales in the 1960s and 1970s (Roms), Northern Ireland during and after the ‘troubles’ (Jeffers) and the Hulme area of Manchester in the 1990s (Cochrane). Other case studies focus on individual figures such as the Restoration actor Thomas Betterton (Roberts), the female Victorian theatre practitioners Aimée Beringer and Constance Beerbohm (Newey) and the early twentieth-century performer the 5th Marquis of Anglesey (Gardner). What holds these case studies together is the emphasis in each on a ‘historiography of the histories’ (p. 2). The real strength of the volume lies in the way that the chapters coalesce around key historiographic issues such as the presence of the historian's self within their work; the need for an ethics of care and responsibility (to the past, present and future, as well as to the research subject); and the nature, treatment and use of evidence. Some of the provocations take us into new realms: Roms and Roberts suggest we need to reconsider what counts as evidence, while Gardner presents a fascinating exploration of the challenges of dissemination beyond the academy, as well as a demonstration of how academic writing can allow the historian to be present in their work. Other chapters return to familiar but no less interesting issues, with Trivedi, Bank and Cochrane each revealing how issues of identity politics, academic disciplines and the availability of evidence continue to shape the histories that are both told and untold.

Untold histories, and issues of evidence and historiography are also central to Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England. There have been a number of studies examining the ‘stars’ of Georgian and Regency theatre, yet few which focus on men like Joseph Munden, John Liston, John Bannister, John Emery and Charles Mathews: men who, while famous in their own time, have to varying extents been forgotten by historians today. In his detailed case studies on the work of these low comic actors, however, Davis not only reminds us of gaps in current histories, but also demonstrates a productive means of approaching them. Taking portraits and prints of these performers, which he argues were the product of a ‘collaboration between actor and artist’ (p. 5), and placing these in dialogue with theatrical criticism, Davis gains new insights into styles of acting as well as into how actors achieved the effects they were celebrated for. Central to Davis's argument is the close relationship between the worlds of theatre and visual art: both literally with actors being sitters, as well as artists and collectors in their own right; and discursively, with the work of artists such as Hogarth and Wilkie being used as a touchstone for understanding the performances of low comic actors. In demonstrating how artistic ideas about both caricature and the faithful representation of everyday life fed into discourse around low comic acting Davis presents a new frame through which to explore acting in the period more broadly: including that of female performers who receive only a passing mention in the study on the grounds that they are harder to classify as low comedians. Just like Theatre History and Historiography, therefore, Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England both responds to existing gaps and looks ahead to potential future research. Both volumes will be of interest beyond their immediate disciplines: the former being relevant not just to theatre historians but also to historians more generally, and the latter, with its wealth of primary visual and textual evidence, being a valuable resource for any scholar of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theatre, as well as to art historians.