Early American Literature: A Bibliography of Secondary Material


DRAMA

Bigsby, Christopher, and Don B. Wilmeth, eds. The Cambridge History of American Theatre: Volume 1, Beginnings to 1870. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Brown, Jared.  The Theatre in America during the Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Gallagher, Kent G.  The Foreigner in Early American Drama: A Study in Attitudes. The Hague: Mouton, 1966. 

Havens, Daniel F.  The Columbian Muse of Comedy: The Development of a Native Tradition in Early American Social Comedy, 1787-1845. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1973. 

Jones, Eugene H.  Native Americans as Shown on the Stage, 1753-1916. Metuchen: Scarecrow P, 1988.

Kritzer, Amelia Howe, ed. Plays by Early American Women, 1775-1850. Ann Arbor: U of  Michigan P, 1995.

Mates, Julian.  The American Musical Stage before 1800. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1962.

McNamara, Brooks.  The American Playhouse in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1969.

Meserve, Walter J.  An Emerging Entertainment: The Drama of the American People to 1828.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1977.

Mulford, Carla. “Re-Presenting Early American Drama and Theatre.” Resources for American Literary  Study 17.1 (1990): 1-24.

Philbrick, Norman, ed.  Trumpets Sounding: Propaganda Plays of the American Revolution.  New York: B. Blom, 1972.

Porter, Susan L.  With an Air Debonair: Musical Theatre in America, 1785-1815. Washington: Smithsonian, 1991. 

Quinn, Arthur Hobson.  A History of  the American Drama: From the Beginning to the Civil  War. 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951. 

Rankin, Hugh  F.  The Theater in Colonial America. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1965.

Richards, Jeffrey H. Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 2005.

---. Theater Enough: American Culture and the Metaphor of the World Stage, 1607-1789. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.

---, ed. Early American Drama. New York: Viking Penguin, 1997.

Schofield, Mary Anne, and Cecilia Macheski, eds. Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660-1820. Athens: Ohio UP, 1991.

Vaughn, Jack A.  Early American Dramatists: From the Beginnings to 1900. New York: Ungar,  1981.

Wilmer, Steve E. Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Wolter, Jurgen C.  The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746-1915.  Westport: Greenwood P, 1993. 


The bibliographies were originally compiled by Prof. Edward J. Gallagher, Lehigh University, and are currently updated and sponsored by Minnesota State University Moorhead.
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April 8, 2008