Listing approximately 600 books and more than 2,500 engravings and paintings, Pinacotheca Bettertonæana gives by far the most detailed evidence available of the personal and professional interests of any seventeenth-century performer. Unique in content, Pinacotheca Bettertonæana is also exceptionally scarce in quantity. Never edited before, the catalogue has very rarely been so much as referred to by stage historians; and for those who have consulted it, many of its entries have proved dauntingly obscure. A modern edition of Pinacotheca Bettertonæana is therefore of significant value to theatre historians and those interested in the history and sociology of reading, and to scholars in fine art who concern themselves with the development of a market for painting in the eighteenth century. This annotated edition challenges received wisdom about the social status of actors in the seventeenth century and contributes to a growing body of knowledge about reading habits in the period.

Hardback;179 pp +26 ill., ISBN 978 0 85430 077 8