Introduction

Abstract The Introduction sets out the book’s threefold contribution to studies of the nineteenth century, women’s writing, and performance and adaptation studies. It addresses the book’s key theoretical underpinnings: beginning with a definition of key terms (e.g., drama, theatre, performance, theatricality), and continuing by placing the book in the context of adaptation studies, and studies of the nineteenth-century novel and drama. After addressing the sources of this study, the introduction closes with an overview of the book and a reminder of its original contribution to knowledge: Theatrical Afterlives: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Novels on the Stage provides a new methodology to access nineteenth-century fiction by women through the lens of its dramatic offspring and explores how such lens helps unveil quietly progressive and easily missed aspects of the novels.