From San Francisco Eastward

Victorian Theater in the American West

Carolyn Grattan Eichin (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

2026
University of Nevada Press (Verlag)
978-1-64779-268-8 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Januar 2026)
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Finalist for the 2021 Willa Literary Award in Scholarly Non-Fiction

Finalist for the 2021 Will Rogers Medallion Award in Western Non-Fiction

Carolyn Grattan Eichin's From San Francisco Eastward explores the dynamics and influence of theater in the West during the Victorian era. San Francisco, Eichin argues, served as the nucleus of the western theatrical world, having attained prominence behind only New York and Boston as the nation's most important theatrical center by 1870. By focusing on the West's hinterland communities, theater as a capitalist venture driven by the sale of cultural forms is illuminated against the backdrop of urbanization.

Using the vagaries of the West's notorious boom-bust economic cycles, Eichin traces the fiscal, demographic, and geographic influences that shaped western theater. With an emphasis on the 1860s and 70s, this thoroughly researched work uses distinct notions of ethnicity, class, and gender to examine a cultural institution driven by a market economy. From San Francisco Eastward is a thorough analysis of the ever-changing theatrical personalities and strategies that shaped Victorian theater in the West, and the ways in which theater as a business transformed the values of a region.

Carolyn Grattan Eichin has contributed numerous articles to western journals and has worked as an archaeologist and historian. She lives in California.

Introduction

Chapter I: The Western Setting: Reciprocity with the Hinterland

Chapter II: Deconstructing Western Audiences; Class, Ethnicity, Gender, and the Necessary Evil

Chapter III: Earliest Entertainment Venues—Sexualized Genres

Chapter IV: Theater's Social Setting—Transition to Respectability

Chapter V: Moving the Cultural Frontier with Combination Companies

Chapter VI: The Fluid World of Variety Theater

Chapter VII: Sculptors in Snow: Legitimate Theater Successes

Chapter VIII: Minority Voices in the Theater—a Productive Dissonance

Conclusion

Endnotes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Erscheint lt. Verlag	20.1.2026
Zusatzinfo	25 photographs
Verlagsort	Reno
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Regional- / Landesgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-64779-268-1 / 1647792681
ISBN-13	978-1-64779-268-8 / 9781647792688
Zustand	Neuware