Abstract/Summary

The careers of Aimée Beringer and her daughters Esmé and Vera endured for eight decades, but they are largely forgotten today. Working in the popular theatre, when divisions between “art” and “commerce” were solidifying, they were dismissed by male contemporaries, and largely overlooked by historians. This thesis will examine the Beringers’ work as a family and their overtly careful negotiation of their place in a hostile professional sphere in crafting a conventional public image which was contrary to their complicated reality as writers, managers, and actresses. While this allowed them to work continuously during their lifetime, it obscured their ground-breaking accomplishments, subsequently causing them to be ignored in favour of more radical colleagues. This thesis attempts to restore the Beringers to history by constructing and analysing a detailed account of their careers as a familial dynasty. Chronologically organised chapters will cover Aimée Beringer’s work as novelist, playwright, and manager, and her daughters’ acting lives and their subsequent writing, lecturing, and attempts to prosper in the changing theatrical climate of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These chapters will reveal a body of work reflecting on the personal and political issues that mattered to them, which was often premièred in matinées, a space most often frequented by female audiences. The thesis shows the Beringers adapting as a family to changing theatrical environments alongside significant events in their personal lives, including Aimée’s decision to leave her husband and Vera having a child outside marriage. The final chapters cover Vera’s beginnings as a playwright, Esmé’s Suffragette-inspired portrayal of Paulina, and Aimée’s final produced play before her death in 1936, after which we see Vera’s continued maturation as a dramatist, and Esmé’s evolution as a Shakespearean lecturer and actor. Evidence from previously unknown family papers has helped bring these notable achievements to light.