Harry Lyons is 'here, there and everywhere': Australia's late-19th-century global entertainment broker

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Title Harry Lyons is 'here, there and everywhere': Australia's late-19th-century global entertainment broker
Creator Contributors
Abstract/Description This article brings to light the career of Australian-born theatrical agent Harry Lyons (1841-1913) whose entrepreneurial activities span the period now attributed by historians as the first phase of globalisation (from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I). Travelling internationally in pursuit of his commercial speculations, Lyons introduced Australian audiences to some of the biggest international stars of the era. Revealing that Lyons' commercial interests covered the cultural spectrum from high art (opera and Shakespeare) to popular entertainments (circus, bicycle meets, ethnographic installations), the author examines Lyons' eclectic career within the context of modernity, arguing he was one of the newly emergent middlemen of culture who influenced popular consumption and the making of taste. Progressing in tandem with the modernities of his era, Lyons' long career provides a useful lens through which to reconsider the expansion and diversification of late-colonial theatrical activity, as well as the ways that theatrical production in Australia absorbed international influences and contributed to trends internationally.
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Source Australasian Drama Studies, ADSA, VIC
Issue 72
Page 1-30
Date Issued April 2018
Language English
ISSN 0810-4123
Citation Gillian Arrighi, Harry Lyons is 'here, there and everywhere': Australia's late-19th-century global entertainment broker, Australasian Drama Studies, 72, April 2018, 1-30
Data Set AusStage
Resource Identifier 68776