Manchester University Press Kitty Marion: Actor and Activist (Women, Theatre and Performance)

The autobiography of Kitty Marion, born Katherine Marie Schafer, was written in the early 1930s but never published. It records Marion’s childhood in Germany, her life in British provincial theatre and music hall and her campaigns against the ‘casting couch’, a career as a militant suffragette during which she committed numerous acts of arson, was imprisoned and force-fed, and finally her move to America and involvement in the American Birth Control Movement. This volume publishes her autobiography for the first time, alongside an introduction that outlines the problems Marion experienced trying to publish her story, and its subsequent history; it goes on to address some of the issues Marion’s story raises about women’s history of activism. The autobiography has been footnoted in detail so that the reader can locate people and events without resorting to research that interrupts reading. The Epilogue details her life in New York after the end of the autobiography, including her work in the Federal Theatre Project, while the three appendices reproduce extracts from key archive documents which throw additional light on the autobiography. Kitty Marion: Actor and activist is a unique and rich resource which students of the theatre, feminist activism, and women’s history, and general readers will find rewarding. The editors are experts in complimentary fields: Viv Gardner is a performance historian with a particular interest in actresses’ memoirs, and Diane Atkinson is a suffrage historian.