Overview
Restaging the Past is the first collection devoted to the study of pageants in Britain, ranging from their Edwardian origins to the present day. In the twentieth century, people all across Britain succumbed to “pageant fever.” Thousands of people dressed up in historical costumes and performed scenes from local history, and hundreds of thousands more watched them. These pageants were one of the most significant aspects of popular engagement with the past between 1900 and the 1970s: they took place in large cities, small towns, and tiny villages, and engaged a wide range of organizations and social groups, from Women’s Institutes to political parties, schools to churches, and even youth organizations. Pageants were community events, bringing people together in a shared celebration and performance of the past; they also involved many prominent novelists, professional historians, and other writers, and as a result were featured repeatedly in popular and highbrow literature. Although the pageant tradition has largely died out, the contributors argue that it deserves to be acknowledged as a key aspect of community history during a period of great social and political change—and, they show, because of its former prominence, some lingering signs of “pageant fever” can still be seen in Britain today.
Full Product Details
Author: Angela Bartie ,
Linda Fleming ,
Mark Freeman ,
Alexander Hutton
Publisher: UCL Press
Imprint: UCL Press
Weight: 0.830kg
ISBN: 9781787354074
ISBN 10: 1787354075
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 17 August 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
'Restaging the Past has an excellent introduction ... there is something for everyone and all [chapters] are well worth reading for the ideas they raise and approaches they adopt.' The Local Historian 'A wide-ranging study, skilfully stitched together by an impressive introduction and afterword.' International Journal of Regional and Local History 'This book makes a valuable contribution to the history of education, encouraging greater consideration of where and how people are educated beyond the parameters of formal educational institutions. The reader is left in no doubt that pageants were an important cultural and educational phenomenon, which impacted on people's understanding of the past.' History of Education
Author Information
Angela Bartie is Senior Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh. She was a Co-Investigator on the ‘Redress of the Past’ historical pageants project. Linda Fleming is Research Associate on the ‘History of British Humanism’ project at the University of Glasgow; she was also a Research Associate on the ‘Redress of the Past’ project. Mark Freeman is Reader in Education and Social History at the UCL Institute of Education. He was a Co-Investigator on the ‘Redress of the Past’ project. Alexander Hutton is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at King’s College London. He was a Research Associate on the ‘Redress of the Past’ project. Paul Readman is Professor of Modern British History at King’s College London. He was Principal Investigator on the ‘Redress of the Past’ project.
