Excerpt from Comedy Queens of the Georgian Era This book does not profess to be a theatrical history. It is simply a series Of biographical sketches of some of the most prominent English comedy actresses Of the Georgian period. As Leigh Hunt remarked, most people are more eager to hear of actors and actresses than of the members of other professions, and in reading accounts Of them most Of us incline more to the comic than the tragic, and more to the women than the men. But a record Of the strictly professional career of an actor or actress is apt to become a mere dry chronicle of successive representations. I have therefore dealt with these ladies, so far as was possible, more from the private than the professional point of view; and I hope that, in addition to the interest Of the separate personalities, these brief biographies may be found to have a further interest as a series of character sketches Of a dozen representative women who, in the course Of the eighteenth century, attained to eminence in the only profession then open to their sex. There is also another reason for dealing with them from the personal rather than from the professional standpoint. Colley Cibber lamented that the animated graces Of the player. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.