Frederick Burwick

Author and editor of thirty-three books and one hundred fifty essays, Frederick Burwick is a leading historian and critic of British drama of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Among his outstanding books in the field, Playing to the Crowd: London Popular Theatre, 1780-1830 (2011) is a significant study of the productions of the minor theatres, how they were adapted to appeal to the local patrons and the audiences who worked and lived in these communities; his British Drama of the Industrial Revolution (2015) is the first work to examine how the theatre came to the support of the labour movement during the early years of severe repression; Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting (2009) explains the radical changes affecting theatre performance, acting, and audience, as theatres were expanded to accommodate larger audiences, and acting styles and the plays themselves evolved to meet the expectations of the new audiences. Burwick has been named Distinguished Scholar by the British Academy (1992) and by the Keats-Shelley Association (1998). The International Conference on Romanticism has presented him with their Lifetime Achievement Award (2013).