Troupers of the Gold Coast: The Rise of Lotta Crabtree

Description

Originally published in 1928, Troupers of the Gold Coast follows the startup and success of a theater company of the same name that started performing in 1837 at California's First Theater. More than 2,000 actors and actresses performed and trained with the company between 1848 and 2005. Until their last show in 2005, they were the oldest continually performing theater company in the world. By the time the Troupers found their footing, though, a little girl named Charlotte (Lotta) Crabtree was achieving an early stardom. Since the age of six, she had been performing along the coast for men and women of the Gold Rush. Her mother managed her career, thus ensuring that Lotta was never taken advantage of. She was extremely popular and very successful in acting, singing, dancing, and banjo playing. Lotta, who was named "The Nation's Darling," was able to tour the United States and Europe before retiring in her forties. Troupers of the Gold Coast captures the rise of one America's most beloved entertainers, as well as the formation and excitement surrounding one of the most popular and successful American theater troupes of all time. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Constance Mayfield Rourke (1885--1941) was an American author and educator. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended Sorbonne and Vassar College. She taught at Vassar from 1910 to 1915. She specialized in American popular culture and wrote numerous pieces of criticism for magazines like The Nation and The New Republic. However, she made her name as a writer of biographies and biographical sketches of notable American figures, such as John James Audubon, P. T. Barnum, Lotta Crabtree, Davy Crockett, and Charles Sheeler, as well as books exploring different components of American culture and its history, including American Humor. She died in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1941. James F. Wilson is Professor of English and Theatre at LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His articles and reviews have appeared in numerous academic journals and chapter anthologies. He is co-editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, published by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, and the author of Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance (University of Michigan Press). He resides in New York City, New York.