Stereoscopic London: Plays of Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Arthur Wing Pinero in the 1890s

Stereoscopic London is about Oscar Wilde’s, George Bernard Shaw’s and Arthur Wing Pinero’s plays written and performed in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Performed extensively on the English stage and indeed throughout the English-speaking world, the plays reflect different backgrounds, origins, and life trajectories of the playwrights. All plays considered in the book are inextricably connected to London and they function as important documents of social history. They are examples of developing dramatic forms within which London and Londoners appear as both the dissolving and unifying elements of the broad spectrum of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century society. The themes and concerns of these works accurately reflect those of Victorian/Edwardian Londoners. Stereoscopic London provides an understanding of the close connection between London society, with its manners and morals, and the city’s visible and invisible impact on the characters depicted in these plays.