‘A Nobler End’: Mary Webb and the Victorian Platform

Abstract

Calls for a more careful examination of dramatic reader Mary Webb, one of the first black women to take the public platform in Great Britain. Examines four sets of issues surrounding Webb’s “performance” of race and takes the materials surrounding her 1856 Stafford House reading as its central texts: the intersections of race, gender, and the public platform embodied in the promotion of the Stafford House reading; the spectacle of Webb’s reading, including the ways Webb’s public reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s work breaks significantly with Stowe’s relative silence on her first British tour. Views Webb’s dramatic/rhetorical practices in dialogue with those of other black anti-slavery orators in Britain; examines the constitution and representation of Webb’s audience.