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Billy Waters is Dancing - Mary L. Shannon

Billy Waters is Dancing

Or, How a Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
384 Seiten
2024
Yale University Press (Verlag)
978-0-300-26768-6 (ISBN)
CHF 52,90 inkl. MwSt
The story of William Waters, Black street performer in Regency London, and how his huge celebrity took on a life of its own
 
Every child in Regency London knew Billy Waters, the celebrated “King of the Beggars.” Likely born into enslavement in 1770s New York, he became a Royal Navy sailor. After losing his leg in a fall from the rigging, the talented and irrepressible Waters became London’s most famous street performer. His extravagantly costumed image blazed across the stage and in print to an unprecedented degree.
 
For all his contemporary renown, Waters died destitute in 1823—but his legend would live on for decades.
 
Mary L. Shannon’s biography draws together surviving traces of Waters’ life to bring us closer to the historical figure underlying them. Considering Waters’ influence on the London stage and his echoing resonances in visual art, and writing by Douglass, Dickens, and Thackeray, Shannon asks us to reconsider Black presences in nineteenth-century popular culture. This is a vital attempt to recover a life from historical obscurity—and a fascinating account of what it meant to find fame in the Regency metropolis.

Mary L. Shannon is a writer, broadcaster, and senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Roehampton, where her research focuses on nineteenth-century literature and culture. She is author of the award-winning Dickens, Reynolds and Mayhew on Wellington Street.

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 69 b-w + 16 color illus.
Sprache englisch
Maße 156 x 235 mm
Themenwelt Literatur Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
Kunst / Musik / Theater Theater / Ballett
Sachbuch/Ratgeber Geschichte / Politik
Geschichte Teilgebiete der Geschichte Kulturgeschichte
Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
ISBN-10 0-300-26768-1 / 0300267681
ISBN-13 978-0-300-26768-6 / 9780300267686
Zustand Neuware
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