The Victorian Music Hall : Culture, Class and Conflict

This book is the first serious study of the Victorian music hall from a national perspective. It outlines the history of the halls, their programmes and the particular composition of their audiences, and examines specific conflicts in London and the regions in terms of class and culture. The London scene is shown as being untypical for the nation as a whole.

With the exception of the occasional local case study, music-hall history has until now been presented as the history of the London halls. This book attempts to redress the balance by setting music-hall history within a national perspective. Kift argues that before the 1890s the halls catered to a predominantly working-class and lower middle-class audience of both sexes and all ages and that they were instrumental in giving these classes a strong and self-confident identity. The halls' ability to sustain a distinct class-awareness was one of their greatest strengths - but this factor was also at the root of many of the controversies which surrounded them. These controversies are at the centre of the book and Kift treats them as test cases for vertical and horizontal social relations which provide fresh insights into nineteenth-century British society and politics.