[ecrea] new book - Female Stars of British Cinema

*/Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question/*

Melanie Williams

Edinburgh University Press

Paperback: 9781474405645

£19.99

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-female-stars-of-british-cinema-13744.html 


“This book’s sharp analysis of seven carefully-chosen British female 
stars is fully attendant to issues of class, celebrity, femininity and 
nation. Concentrating on women with long careers as well as those which 
were cut short by prevalent difficulties and obstacles, the book 
develops many pertinent insights about the formulation and impact of 
diverse star personae in a British context. It is essential reading for 
those interested in British cinema and in film stardom more generally.”

Professor Sarah Street, University of Bristol

//

Film stars are often seen as a Hollywood creation, but this book 
explores how British cinema developed its own culture of stardom, 
creating female stars who were not only loved by British audiences but 
also internationally admired. It uses case studies of seven female stars 
whose careers span the period from the 1940s to the present day -Jean 
Kent, Diana Dors, Rita Tushingham, Glenda Jackson, Helena Bonham Carter, 
Emily Lloyd, and Judi Dench – as a way of exploring how British star 
femininities have developed over time, and how the image of the British 
female star has responded to broader social and cultural changes.

These ‘women in question’ offer a way into the complexities of British 
cinema’s distinctive variant of female stardom, which has sometimes 
espoused glamour and sometimes rejected it, and which is profoundly 
entangled with issues of regional, national and ethnic identity, as well 
as class, sexuality and age. Exploring and investigating the variety of 
female stars produced by British cinema over the last seventy-five 
years, this book also interrogates some of the ongoing omissions and 
absences from that same cinematic firmament.

Contents:

1. Introduction: questions of female stardom in British cinema
2. ‘A girl appears in camiknickers’: Jean Kent’s austerity stardom
3. ‘Blonde glamour machine’: Diana Dors in the 1950s and beyond
4. British new waif: Rita Tushingham and sixties female stardom
5. ‘A constant threat’: Glenda Jackson and the challenges of seventies 
stardom
6. ‘From schoolgirl to stardom’: the discovery and development of Helena 
Bonham Carter and Emily Lloyd in the 1980s and 1990s
7. National treasure: Judi Dench and older female stardom into the 2000s
8. Conclusion: the unbearable whiteness of being (a female British star)

*Dr Melanie Williams*

Reader in Film and Television Studies,

School of Art, Media and American Studies,

University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ

Tel: 01603 593351

Email: (melanie.williams /at/ uea.ac.uk) <mailto:(melanie.williams /at/ uea.ac.uk)>


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