HAMILTON, Cicely.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Pageant of Great Women. First edition of Hamilton's influential suffrage play celebrating women throughout history. A Pageant of Great Women was first performed at London's Scala Theatre on 10 November 1909 and was staged across Britain. The production featured actresses Ellen Terry, Charlotte Despard, and others as historic and symbolic figures such as St Hilda, Florence Nightingale, and Catherine the Great.Hamilton (1872-1952), a member of the WSPU and composer of its anthem "The March of the Women", wrote the play at the invitation of actress and director Edith Craig (1869-1947), Ellen Terry's daughter. The Pageant exemplifies the suffrage players' use of theatricality and spectacle as political strategy. Terry described it as "the finest practical piece of political propaganda" (p. 117).The Pageant was the first publication issued by the National Suffrage Shop, which was opened by the actress Sime Seruya (1876-1955) in 1910. Some of the photographic portraits in the volume were provided by the suffragette Lena Connell (1875-1949), who photographed many of the movement's most prominent campaigners and employed exclusively women in her studio.

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