This innovative book examines the careers of three performers whose professional lives together spanned the period from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, from the heyday of neoclassicism to the coming of realism. While the individual essays concentrate on the specific work of each actress, a wide-ranging introduction relates their collective achievement to social and cultural change. Vivid reconstructions of their interpretations and unique accounts of theatrical conditions place the art of three very different but pivotal figures in context.