A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement (commonly referred to as a prenup) is a written contract entered into by a couple before marriage or a civil union that enables them to select and control many of the legal rights they acquire upon marrying, and what happens when their marriage eventually ends by death or divorce. Couples enter into a written prenuptial agreement to supersede many of the default marital laws that would otherwise apply in the event of divorce, such as the laws that govern the division of property, retirement benefits, savings, and the right to seek alimony (spousal support) with agreed-upon terms that provide certainty and clarify their marital rights. A premarital agreement may also contain waivers of a surviving spouse's right to claim an elective share of the estate of the deceased spouse.

In some countries, including the United States, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the prenuptial agreement not only provides for what happens in the event of a divorce but also protects some property during the marriage, for instance in case of bankruptcy. Many countries, including Canada, France, Italy, and Germany, have matrimonial regimes, in addition to, or in some cases, instead of prenuptial agreements.

Postnuptial agreements are similar to prenuptial agreements, except that they are entered into after a couple is married. When divorce is imminent, postnuptial agreements are referred to as separation agreements.

Legal recognition
Laws vary between states and countries in what content they may contain and under what conditions and circumstances a prenuptial agreement may be declared unenforceable, such as an agreement signed under fraud, duress, or without adequate disclosure of assets.

Africa

South Africa

In South Africa, a civil marriage or civil union is, by default, a marriage in a community of property. To marry out of the community of property, the parties must sign an antenuptial contract in the presence of a notary public before their marriage and the contract must be registered in the Deeds Office within three months from the date of signature of the contract.

When marrying out of the community, the parties have a choice to marry with application of the accrual system or without application of the accrual system.

If the parties marry without accrual, the spouses' respective estates would always remain separate and neither party will have any proprietary claim against the other by the marriage.

If the parties marry with application of the accrual, their respective estates would remain separate during the subsistence of the marriage. Upon dissolution of the marriage, whether by death or divorce, the spouse with the lesser accrual would have a claim against the spouse with the larger accrual for half the difference between their accrual values.

Asia

India
In India, prenuptial agreements are very rare and do not have any governing laws. However, with rising divorce rates, people are showing increasing interest in them. Some lawyers think that prenups don't have legal sanctity in India. However, some form of contract is signed in some cases, usually among affluent citizens. But, the agreements need to be reasonable and not violate pre-existing laws like the Hindu Marriage Act. Indian courts allow a memorandum of settlement to be signed during divorces. But, no court has yet been asked to enforce a prenup.

These agreements may come under the Indian Contract Act of 1872. Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act states that agreements are to be considered contracts if they are made with the free consent of the parties. However, Section 23 of the same act states that a contract may be void if they are immoral or against public policy.

Goa is the only Indian state where a prenuptial is legally enforceable, as it follows the Portuguese Civil Code, of 1867. A prenuptial agreement may be signed between the two parties at the time of marriage, stating the regime of ownership. If a prenuptial has not been signed, then the marital property is simply divided equally between the husband and wife.

Hong Kong
Pre- and Post-Nuptial Agreements in Hong Kong can be of "magnetic importance" in deciding the parties' claims for ancillary relief. The leading case of SPH v SA in Hong Kong's highest court, the Court of Final Appeal followed the earlier English Supreme Court decision of Radmacher v Granatino. That was perhaps unsurprising as one of the Judges in Radmacher (Lord Collins) also sat in Hong Kong as an NPJ. (Similarly, the successful leading counsel for Frau Radmacher, Richard Todd QC was also leading counsel for Madame S. in SPH v SA).

Thailand
The prenuptial agreement in Thailand is concluded by mutual consent of the man and woman who want to marry. Under Thai law, a prenuptial agreement is recognized by the Commercial and Civil Code of Thailand. A valid and enforceable Thai prenuptial agreement legally requires that

 The content of the prenuptial made in Thailand cannot be against the law or good morals;
 Both the prospective husband and wife must understand the content of the prenuptial;
 The prenuptial in Thailand must be made before the marriage, a contract between husband and wife concerning personal and jointly owned property made after the marriage registration (post-nuptial) is void;
 Both the future husband and wife must sign the prenuptial in the presence of at least 2 witnesses and the agreement must be entered into the Marriage Register together with the marriage.
These conditions are found in clause 1466 of the Commercial and Civil Code of Thailand.Following the laws on Thai marriage, the prenuptial agreement mainly relates to assets and financial implications of marriage and establishes conditions of ownership and management of personal and concrete joint property and potential division of marital assets, if the marriage will be dissolved. The prenuptial agreement also includes a list of each side's assets at the time of the marriage and guarantees, that debts and property before the marriage remain in possession of the initial owner or debtor.Personal property includes:
(Mostly described at clause 1471 of the Commercial and Civil Code of Thailand):
property owned by spouses before the marriage;
property for personal use — work instruments, clothes, etc.;
gifts from third parties or property received through the testament (if it is not indicated in the testament, that property should transfer to joint property of spouses);
"khongman" — real estate transmitted to the bride which is different from a dowry, or sinsod, which is paid to the parents of the bride.
a transfer of personal property to another property during marriage will normally remain personal property. Just be careful about real estate as in Thailand, it causes a problem and the conflict of law act explain these.

The joint property includes:
property acquired at the time of the marriage;
property received by one of the spouses at the time of the marriage as a gift, if in the document attached to a gift or in the document compiled by the spouse, this property was declared as joint (Marital Assets);
income acquired from personal property as stated by clause 1474 of the Thai and Commercial Civil Code.

Europe

Prenuptial agreements have long been recognized as valid in several European countries, such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. While in some of these countries, there are limits on what restrictions the courts will see as enforceable or valid (e.g. Germany after 2001, where appeals courts have indicated this) a written and properly initiated contract, freely agreed upon, cannot be challenged by, for instance, invoking the circumstances under which the marriage broke down or the conduct of either part. In France, The Netherlands and Belgium (as in Quebec, which has the same judicial tradition) prenuptial agreements must be set up in the presence of a notary.

In many of the countries mentioned, pre-nuptials may also protect the non-shared property and money from being pulled into bankruptcy and can serve to support lawsuits and settlements during the marriage (for instance if one part has sold or wrongfully mortgaged a piece of property that had been set aside by his/her partner).

Ukraine
Under provisions of Section 10 of the Family Code of Ukraine, marriage relationships, rights, and duties of spouses can be regulated by a marriage contract as well if spouses wish to settle their property relations in another manner then it is provided by the Family Code of Ukraine.

A marriage (prenuptial) contract can be concluded by a woman and a man, who applied for registration of their marriage as well as by spouses. An underaged person, who wants to conclude a marriage contract before registration of the marriage, is to have the signed consent of his/her parent or custodian certified by a notary.

Numerous provisions of this section of the Family Code of Ukraine provide quite extensive requirements regarding the form and contents of the marriage contract and the procedural issues of making the same are regulated by appropriate Instruction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine regarding the procedure of notarization of marriage contracts as well as far as notarization is required.

Imperative requirements regarding the content of the marriage contract are provided by clause 93 of the Family Code of Ukraine, which states that the marriage contract governs property relations between spouses, and determines their property rights and duties. A marriage contract can also determine the property rights and duties of spouses as parents but with certain limitations. Personal relations of spouses cannot be regulated by the marriage contract, as well as personal relations between spouses and their children. This rule is also provided by clause 93 of the Family Code of Ukraine. Marriage contracts, which reduce the rights of children and put one of the spouses in a poor material state, are not permitted by the above imperative regulation. Within the framework of the marriage contract, none of the spouses can acquire any immovable property or other property, which requires state registration.

United Kingdom
A prenuptial agreement is distinct from the historic marriage settlement which was concerned not primarily with the effects of divorce but with the establishment and maintenance of dynastic families, or a divorce settlement entered into by parties in connection with dissolving their marriage.

England and Wales
Prenuptial agreements historically had not been considered legally enforceable in England and Wales due to a reluctance on the part of the judiciary for public policy reasons.

The 2010 Supreme Court test case of Radmacher v Granatino, overturned the previous legal framework on them to recognise changing societal and judicial views on the personal autonomy of married partners. Pre-nuptial agreements can now be enforced by the courts as part of their discretion in financial settlement cases under section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 so long as the three-stage Radmacher test is met and it is considered fair to do so, keeping in mind the interests of any child of the family. Radmacher holds that the courts will give effect to a nuptial agreement that is freely entered into by each party with a full appreciation of its implications unless in the circumstances prevailing, it would not be fair to hold the parties to their agreement. The case provided substantial amounts of guidance relevant to all nuptial agreement cases that have occurred since 2010.

The Law Commission's 2014 report on Matrimonial Property generally accepted the decision in Radmacher and recommended the creation of a 'qualifying nuptial agreement' regime by Parliament which would create a completely binding pre-nuptial agreement so long as certain requirements were met. The Commission's recommendations have yet to be implemented.

Scotland
In contrast to the rest of the United Kingdom, prenuptial agreements are generally regarded as being legally enforceable in Scotland.

Northern Ireland
The legal status of prenuptial agreements in Northern Ireland is similar to that in England and Wales, in that they are generally regarded as not being legally enforceable. However, since the ruling in Radmacher v Granatino, which also applied in Northern Ireland, the judiciary are more likely to hold parties to the terms of such agreements, unless doing so would be obviously unfair.

North America

Canada
Prenuptial agreements in Canada are governed by provincial legislation. Each province and territory in Canada recognize prenuptial agreements. For instance, in Ontario, prenuptial agreements are called marriage contracts and they are recognized by section 52 of the Family Law Act.

United States
In the United States, prenuptial agreements are recognized in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, and they are enforceable if prepared by state and federal law requirements. It has been reported that the demand for prenuptial agreements in the United States has increased in recent years, particularly among millennial couples. In a 2016 survey conducted by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), member attorneys reported seeing an increase, with the strongest interest in protecting increases in the value of the separate property, inheritances, and division of community property.

In the past, couples entered into premarital agreements with a level of uncertainty about their validity. Today, the presumptive validity and enforceability of such agreements in states that have adopted the UPAA/UPMAA including Florida, Virginia, New Jersey, and California, is no longer in question.

Currently, 28 States and the District of Columbia have adopted a version of the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act (UPAA) or the updated Uniform Premarital Agreements Act (UPMAA). The UPAA was passed in 1983 by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) to promote more uniformity and predictability between state laws relating to these contracts in an increasingly transient society. The UPAA was partly enacted to ensure that a prenup that was validly entered into in one state would be honored by the courts of another state where the couple might get a divorce. The UPMAA was subsequently promulgated in 2012 by the ULC to clarify and modernize inconsistent state laws and create a uniform approach to all prenuptial agreements and postnuptial agreements that:

 Requires marital agreements to be in writing and declares them to be enforceable without consideration, modernizing existing state laws;
 Offers couples a flexible framework for premarital agreements that promote responsible planning and informed decision-making; and
 Provides courts in every state a framework for determining an agreement's validity, regardless of where it was executed.

The laws enacted by states adopting the UPAA/UPMAA do have some variances from state to state, but this framework of laws has certainly made it much easier for legal practitioners to prepare enforceable marital agreements for clients by clearly stating the requirements. For instance, under Florida law, there is a very material difference in what is required to enter into a legally binding prenuptial agreement versus a postnuptial agreement. To validly waive the spousal rights that would ordinarily be available to a surviving spouse under Florida law (such as homestead, elective share, exempt property, family allowance, etc.), the parties have to make a full and fair disclosure of their assets and liabilities to each other before entering into a postnuptial agreement. In contrast, no financial disclosure is required to waive those same spousal rights in a premarital agreement executed before marriage. That said, if the lack of disclosure results in a prenup being unconscionable (unfair to one spouse) under Florida's Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, it may not be enforceable on those grounds.

Even in states that have not enacted the UPAA/UPMAA like New York, duly executed prenuptial agreements are accorded the same presumption of legality as any other contract. A couple signing a prenuptial agreement doesn't need to retain separate attorneys to represent them, as long as each party understands the agreement and signs it voluntarily intending to be bound to its terms. There is a strong public policy favoring parties ordering and deciding their interests through contracts. There are no state or federal laws that force adults with contractual capacity to have to hire legal counsel to be able to enter into a marital contract such as a prenuptial agreement, except for a California law that requires that the parties be represented by counsel if spousal support (alimony) is limited by the agreement. A prenuptial agreement may be challenged if there is evidence that the contract was signed under duress. Whether a premarital agreement was signed under duress must be proven by the facts and circumstances of each case. For example, it has been held that a spouse's claim that she believed that there would be no wedding if she did not sign a prenuptial agreement, where the wedding was only two weeks away and wedding plans had been made, was insufficient to demonstrate duress.

Prenuptial agreements may limit the parties' property and spousal support rights but also guarantee either party the right to seek or receive spousal support up to a certain limit. It may be impossible to set aside a properly drafted and executed prenup. A prenup can dictate not only what happens if the parties divorce, but also what happens when they die. They can act as a contract to make a will and/or eliminate all of one's rights to property, probate homestead, probate allowance, right to take as a predetermined heir, and the right to act as an executor and administrator of one's spouse's estate.

A prenuptial agreement is only valid if it is completed before marriage. After a couple is married, they may draw up a post-nuptial agreement.

In most jurisdictions in the United States, five elements are required for a valid prenuptial agreement:

 The agreement must be in writing (oral prenups are generally unenforceable);
 Must be executed voluntarily;
 Full and/or fair disclosure at the time of execution;
 The agreement cannot be unconscionable;
 It must be executed by both parties (not their attorneys) and often notarized and/or witnessed.

There are several ways that a prenuptial agreement can be attacked in court. These include a lack of voluntariness, unconscionability, and a failure to disclose assets. Prenuptial agreements in all U.S. states are not allowed to regulate issues relating to the children of the marriage, in particular, custody and access issues. The reason behind this is that matters involving children must be decided in the children's best interests. However, this is controversial: some people believe that as custody battles are often the worst part of a divorce, couples should be able to settle this in advance.

Courts will not enforce requirements that one person will do all housework or that the children will be raised in a certain religion. In recent years, some couples have included social media provisions in their prenuptial agreements, setting forth rules as to what is permissible to be posted on social media networks during the marriage, as well as in the event the marriage is dissolved.

A sunset provision may be inserted into a prenuptial agreement, specifying that after a certain amount of time, the agreement will expire. In Maine, for prenuptial agreements executed before October 1, 1993, unless the parties renew the agreement, it automatically lapses after the birth of a child. In other states, a certain number of years of marriage will cause a prenuptial agreement to lapse. In states that have adopted the UPAA (Uniform Premarital Agreement Act), no sunset provision is provided by statute, but one could be privately contracted for. Note that states have different versions of the UPAA.

Unlike all other contract law, consideration is not required, although a minority of courts point to the marriage itself as the consideration. Through a prenup, a spouse can completely waive rights to property, alimony, or inheritance as well as the elective share, and get nothing in return. Choice of law provisions is critical in prenups. Parties to the agreement can elect to have the law of the state they are married in govern both the interpretation of the agreement and how property is divided at the time of divorce. In the absence of a choice of law clause, it is the law of the place the parties divorce, not the law of the state they were married that decides property and support issues.

In drafting an agreement, it is important to recognize that there are two types of state laws that govern divorceequitable distribution, practiced by 41 states, and community property, practiced in some variation by 9 states. An agreement written in a community property state may not be designed to govern what occurs in an equitable distribution state and vice versa. It may be necessary to retain attorneys in both states to cover the possible eventuality that the parties may live in a state other than the state they were married. Often people have more than one home in different states or they move a lot because of their work so it is important to take that into account in the drafting process.

To financial issues ancillary to divorce, prenuptial agreements are routinely upheld and enforced by courts in virtually all states. There are circumstances in which courts have refused to enforce certain portions/provisions of such agreements. For example, in North Dakota, the divorce courts retain jurisdiction to modify a limitation on the right to seek alimony or spousal support in a premarital agreement if it would cause the spouse who waived such right to need public assistance at the time of divorce. Florida and several other states contain similar limitations to avoid a divorcing spouse from becoming a ward of the state upon divorce under a prenuptial agreement.  Moreover, in Florida where the inheritance (elective share) and homestead rights granted to surviving spouses by state law are so strong, its Premarital Agreement Act requires that a waiver of surviving spouse rights outlined in a prenuptial agreement be executed with the same formality as a will to be enforceable (notarized and witnessed by two disinterested parties).

Same-sex marriages
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court granted same-sex marriages the same legal footing as marriage between opposite-gender couples, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges (decided June 26, 2015). This effect of the Supreme Court's ruling is that a premarital agreement entered into by a same-sex couple in one state is fully enforceable in another state in the event of a divorce.

Federal laws
Certain federal laws apply to the terms that may be included in a premarital agreement. The Retirement Equity Act (REA) of 1984, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on August 23, 1984, reconciled confusion over whether ERISA preempted state divorce laws, thereby preventing pension plans from complying with court orders giving a spouse a portion of the worker's pension in a divorce decree. A prenuptial agreement can contain waivers by which each spouse agrees to release any claims against each other's retirement benefits that arise under both state and federal laws by the marriage, like under the REA.

When a United States citizen chooses to marry an immigrant, that person frequently serves as a Visa sponsor to petition for their fiancé to enter or stay in the United States. The Dept. of Homeland Security requires people sponsoring their immigrant fiancé to come to the U.S. on a Visa to provide an Affidavit of Support, and it is important to take into account the Affidavit of Support obligation for a U.S. sponsor about to publish a prenuptial agreement. The Affidavit of Support creates a 10-year contract between the U.S. Government and the sponsor, requiring the sponsor to financially support the immigrant fiancé from the sponsor's resources. As the I-864 form expressly states, divorce does not terminate the support obligations the sponsor owes to U.S. Government, and the immigrant spouse has rights as a third-party beneficiary of the support promise the sponsor makes in the I-864 Affidavit. As such, any waiver of alimony in their prenuptial agreement must be drafted in a way that does not violate the contract that the U.S. sponsor makes with the government by providing the Affidavit of Support, or it will be at risk of being declared unenforceable.

California
In a 1990 California case, the court of appeals enforced an oral prenuptial agreement in the probate of the estate of one of the parties because the surviving spouse had substantially changed her position in reliance on the oral agreement. However, following changes in the statutory law, it has become much more difficult to change the character of a community or separate property without a written agreement.

Parties can waive disclosure beyond that which is provided, and there is no requirement for notarization, but it is good practice. There are special requirements if parties sign the agreement without an attorney, and the parties must have independent counsel if they limit spousal support (also known as alimony or spousal maintenance in other states). Parties must wait seven days after the premarital agreement is first presented for review before they sign it, but there is no requirement that this be done a certain number of days before the marriage. Prenups often take months to negotiate so they should not be left until the last minute (as people often do). If the prenup calls for the payment of a lump sum at the time of divorce, it may be deemed to promote divorce. This concept has come under attack and a lawyer should be consulted to make sure the prenup does not violate this provision.

In California, through a prenuptial agreement, a couple may waive their rights to share property (community property). The agreement can limit spousal support (although a court at the divorce can set this aside if it deems that the limitation is unconscionable). The agreement can act as a contract to make a will requiring one spouse to provide for the other at death. It can also limit probate rights at death, such as the right to a probate allowance, the right to act as an executor, the right to take as a predetermined heir, and so forth.

North Carolina
Prenuptial agreements are codified in the North Carolina General Statutes and North Carolina Constitution. Chapter 52B of the North Carolina General Statues, titled The Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, covers definitions and enforcement of prenuptial agreements. In the North Carolina Constitution, in ARTICLE XIV MISCELLANEOUS, Sec. 6. Marriage., prenuptial agreements are constitutionally protected.

South Carolina
Prenuptial agreements are codified in the South Carolina Code of Laws and South Carolina Constitution. In Title 20 - Domestic Relations, CHAPTER 1, Marriage, ARTICLE 1, General Provisions, of the South Carolina Code of Laws, it covers the definitions and enforcement of prenuptial agreements. In the South Carolina Constitution, in ARTICLE XIV MISCELLANEOUS, Sec. 6. Marriage., prenuptial agreements are constitutionally protected. In the South Carolina Constitution, ARTICLE XVII, MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS, SECTION 15., prenuptial agreements are constitutionally protected.

Oceania

Australia
Prenuptial agreements are recognised in Australia by the Family Law Act 1975 (Commonwealth). In Australia, a prenuptial agreement is referred to as a Binding Financial Agreement (BFA).

Premarital mediation
Premarital mediation is an alternative way of creating a prenuptial agreement. In this process, a mediator facilitates an open discussion between the couple about all kinds of marital issues, like expectations about working after children are born and saving and spending styles as well as the traditional premarital discussions about property division and spousal support if the marriage is terminated. The engaged couple makes all of the decisions about what would happen in the event of a separation or divorce with the assistance of the mediator. They then draft either a deal memo or a premarital agreement and have it reviewed by their respective attorneys. An agreement developed via mediation is typically less expensive. After all, fewer hours are spent with attorneys because the couple has made all of the decisions together, rather than one side vs the other.

By religion

Christianity
In Catholic Christianity, prenuptial agreements are a matter of civil law, so Catholic canon law does not rule them out in principle (for example, to determine how the property would be divided among the children of a prior marriage upon the death of one spouse). In practice, pre-nuptials may run afoul of Church law in several ways. For example, they cannot subject a marriage to a condition concerning the future. The Code of Canon Law provides: "A marriage subject to a condition about the future cannot be contracted validly". (CIC 1102) The Canon Law: Letter and Spirit, a commentary on canon law, explains that a condition may be defined as "a stipulation by which an agreement is made contingent upon the verification or fulfillment of some circumstance or event that is not yet certain". It goes on to state that "any condition concerning the future attached to matrimonial consent renders marriage invalid". For example, a marriage would be invalid if the parties stipulated that they must have children or they have the right to divorce and remarry someone else.

In Lutheran Christianity, The Lutheran Handbook on Marriage stipulates: "Consider a prenuptial agreement, which helps you identify the value of gifts and inheritances you receive, protects you from your partner's pre-marriage debt, and ensures that children from a prior marriage receive."

Independent Fundamental Baptists reflect a perspective that prenuptial agreements are contrary to Christian teaching regarding marriage as a covenant:

Judaism

In Judaism, the ketubah, a prenuptial contract, has long been established as an integral part of the Jewish marriage and is signed and read aloud at the marriage ceremony. It contains the husband's requirement to support his wife by providing her with food, clothing and sex, as well as providing for the wife's support in the case of divorce or the husband's death. However, under this passage, a woman is free to leave if her husband doesn't provide for her.

In 2004, the High Court of South Africa upheld a cherem against a Johannesburg businessman because he refused to pay his former wife alimony as ordered by The Johannesburg Beth Din.

Recently, a movement supporting an additional prenuptial agreement has emerged in some Modern Orthodox circles. This is in response to a growing number of cases in which the husband refuses to grant gett, a religious divorce. In such matters, the local authorities are unable to intervene, both out of concerns regarding the separation of church and state and because certain halakhic problems would arise. This situation leaves the wife in a state of , in which she is unable to remarry. To remedy this situation, the movement promotes a prenuptial agreement in which the couple agrees to conduct their divorce, should it occur, in a rabbinical court.

Islam
A Muslim woman may lay down certain conditions in the taqliq (prenuptial agreement) before signing the marriage certificate to safeguard her welfare and rights. She may amend the taqliq or add further conditions later.

References

External links

Contract law
Legal documents

Prenuptial agreement


Hispar Glacier is a 49 km long glacier in the Karakoram Mountains of the (Northern Areas, Pakistan) which meets the 63 km long Biafo Glacier at the Hispar La Pass (mountain Pass) at an altitude of 5,128 m (16,824 feet) to create the world's longest glacial system outside of the polar regions. This 100 km highway of ice connects two ancient mountain kingdoms, Nagar (immediately south of Hunza) in the west with Baltistan in the east. The extreme steepness of the hillsides and strenuous nature of the boulder hopping on the lateral moraines and hillsides make this route's upper half the most difficult part of the Biafo - Hispar traverse. Only the Hispar La day includes walking on the Hispar Glacier. The crossing of four major tributary glaciers from the north is most taxing, and potentially high nullah crossings can be dangerous. The views of 7,800 meter (25,600 foot) peaks and of the snow covered cliffs and mountains on the south side of the glacier are particularly impressive.

Glaciers of Pakistan

Hispar Glacier


Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, while changing over time.

In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and films. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a "vaudevillian".

Vaudeville developed from many sources, also including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business", vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades.

Etymology
The origin of the term is obscure but often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville ("voice of the city"). A second speculation is that it comes from the 15th-century songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin, "Vau de Vire". In his Connections television series, science historian James Burke argues that the term is a corruption of the French "Vau de Vire" ("Vire River Valley", in English), an area known for its bawdy drinking songs and where Basselin lived. The Oxford English Dictionary also endorses the  origin, a truncated form of  ("song of the Valley of the Vire"). Around 1610, Jean le Houx collected these works as , which is probably the direct origin of the word. Some, however, preferred the earlier term "variety" to what manager Tony Pastor called its "sissy and Frenchified" successor. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as "variety" well into the 20th century.

Beginnings

With its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the concert saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as "Polite Vaudeville".

In the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere. In the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatergoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found an increasing number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns. A handful of circuses regularly toured the country; dime museums appealed to the curious; amusement parks, riverboats, and town halls often featured "cleaner" presentations of variety entertainment; compared to saloons, music halls, and burlesque houses, which catered to those with a taste for the risqué. In the 1840s, the minstrel show, another type of variety performance, and "the first emanation of a pervasive and purely American mass culture", grew to enormous popularity and formed what Nick Tosches called "the heart of 19th-century show business". A significant influence also came from "Dutch" (i.e., German or faux-German) minstrels and comedians. Medicine shows traveled the countryside offering programs of comedy, music, jugglers, and other novelties along with displays of tonics, salves, and miracle elixirs, while "Wild West" shows provided romantic vistas of the disappearing frontier, complete with trick riding, music and drama. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in America's growing urban hubs.

From the mid-1860s, impresario Tony Pastor, a former singing circus clown who had become a prominent variety theater performer and manager, capitalized on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he began to feature "polite" variety programs in his New York City theatres. Pastor opened his first "Opera House" on the Bowery in 1865, later moving his variety theater operation to Broadway and, finally, to Fourteenth Street near Union Square. He only began to use the term "vaudeville" in place of "variety" in early 1876. Hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown, Pastor barred the sale of liquor in his theatres, eliminated bawdy material from his shows, and offered gifts of coal and hams to attendees. Pastor's experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit.

Popularity

B. F. Keith took the next step, starting in Boston, where he built an empire of theatres and brought vaudeville to the United States and Canada. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, managed the chain to its greatest success. Circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudeville's greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the single-theatre booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years.

Albee also gave national prominence to vaudeville's trumpeting "polite" entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos (e.g., those that used words such as "hell") were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the week's remaining performances or were canceled altogether. In spite of such threats, performers routinely flouted this censorship, often to the delight of the very audience members whose sensibilities were supposedly endangered. He eventually instituted a set of guidelines to be an audience member at his show, and these were reinforced by the ushers working in the theatre.

This "polite entertainment" also extended to Keith's company members. He went to extreme measures to maintain this level of modesty. Keith even went as far as posting warnings backstage such as this: "Don't say 'slob' or 'son of a gun' or 'hully gee' on the stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily... if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theatre where Mr. Keith is in authority." Along these same lines of discipline, Keith's theatre managers would occasionally send out blue envelopes with orders to omit certain suggestive lines of songs and possible substitutions for those words. If actors chose to ignore these orders or quit, they would get "a black mark" on their name and would never again be allowed to work on the Keith Circuit. Thus, actors learned to follow the instructions given to them by B. F. Keith for fear of losing their careers forever.

By the late 1890s, vaudeville had large circuits, houses (small and large) in almost every sizable location, standardized booking, broad pools of skilled acts, and a loyal national following. One of the biggest circuits was Martin Beck's Orpheum Circuit. It incorporated in 1919 and brought together 45 vaudeville theatres in 36 cities throughout the United States and Canada and a large interest in two vaudeville circuits. Another major circuit was that of Alexander Pantages. In his heyday, Pantages owned more than 30 vaudeville theatres and controlled, through management contracts, perhaps 60 more in both the United States and Canada.

At its height, vaudeville played across multiple strata of economic class and auditorium size. On the vaudeville circuit, it was said that if an act would succeed in Peoria, Illinois, it would work anywhere. The question "Will it play in Peoria?" has now become a metaphor for whether something appeals to the American mainstream public.  The three most common levels were the "small time" (lower-paying contracts for more frequent performances in rougher, often converted theatres), the "medium time" (moderate wages for two performances each day in purpose-built theatres), and the "big time" (possible remuneration of several thousand dollars per week in large, urban theatres largely patronized by the middle and upper-middle classes).  As performers rose in renown and established regional and national followings, they worked their way into the less arduous working conditions and better pay of the big time.  The capital of the big time was New York City's Palace Theatre (or just "The Palace" in the slang of vaudevillians), built by Martin Beck in 1913 and operated by Keith.  Featuring a bill stocked with inventive novelty acts, national celebrities, and acknowledged masters of vaudeville performance (such as comedian and trick roper Will Rogers), the Palace provided what many vaudevillians considered the apotheosis of remarkable careers. A standard show bill would begin with a sketch, follow with a single (an individual male or female performer); next would be an alley-oop (an acrobatic act); then another single, followed by yet another sketch such as a blackface comedy. The acts that followed these for the rest of the show would vary from musicals to jugglers to song-and-dance singles and end with a final extravaganza – either musical or drama – with the full company. These shows would feature such stars as ragtime and jazz pianist Eubie Blake, the famous and magical Harry Houdini, and child star Baby Rose Marie. In the New-York Tribunes article about Vaudeville, it is said that at any given time, Vaudeville was employing over twelve thousand different people throughout its entire industry. Each entertainer would be on the road 42 weeks at a time while working a particular "Circuit" – or an individual theatre chain of a major company.

While the neighborhood character of vaudeville attendance had always promoted a tendency to tailor fare to specific audiences, mature vaudeville grew to feature houses and circuits specifically aimed at certain demographic groups. Black patrons, often segregated into the rear of the second gallery in white-oriented theatres, had their own smaller circuits, as did speakers of Italian and Yiddish (see below).  This foreign addition combined with comedy produced such acts as "minstrel shows of antebellum America" and Yiddish theatre. Many ethnic families joined in on this entertainment business, and for them, this traveling lifestyle was simply a continuation of the circumstances that brought them to America. Through these acts, they were able to assimilate themselves into their new home while also bringing bits of their own culture into this new world. White-oriented regional circuits, such as New England's "Peanut Circuit", also provided essential training grounds for new artists while allowing established acts to experiment with and polish new material.  At its height, vaudeville was rivaled only by churches and public schools among the nation's premiere public gathering places.

Another slightly different aspect of Vaudeville was an increasing interest in the female figure. The previously mentioned ominous idea of "the blue envelopes" led to the phrase "blue" material, which described the provocative subject matter present in many Vaudeville acts of the time. Many managers even saw this scandalous material as a marketing strategy to attract many different audiences. As stated in Andrew Erdman's book Blue Vaudeville, the Vaudeville stage was "a highly sexualized space ... where unclad bodies, provocative dancers, and singers of 'blue' lyrics all vied for attention." Such performances highlighted and objectified the female body as a "sexual delight", but more than that, historians think that Vaudeville marked a time in which the female body became its own "sexual spectacle". This sexual image began sprouting everywhere an American went: the shops, a restaurant, the grocery store, etc. The more this image brought in the highest revenue, the more Vaudeville focused on acts involving women. Even acts that were as innocent as a sister act were higher sellers than a good brother act. Consequently, Erdman adds that female Vaudeville performers such as Julie Mackey and Gibson's Bathing Girls began to focus less on talent and more on physical appeal through their figure, tight gowns, and other revealing attire. It eventually came as a surprise to audience members when such beautiful women actually possessed talent in addition to their appealing looks. This element of surprise colored much of the reaction to the female entertainment of this time.

Women
In the 1920s, announcements seeking all-girl bands for vaudeville performances appeared in industry publications like Billboard, Variety and in newspapers. Bands like The Ingenues and The Dixie Sweethearts were well-publicized, while other groups were simply described as "all-girl Revue". According to Feminist Theory, similar trends in theater and film objectified women, an example of male gaze, as women's role in public life was expanding. These expectations for women in the 19th century played a big role in the compelling aspects of vaudeville. Through vaudeville, many women were allowed to join their male counterparts on the stage and found success in their acts.

Leila Marie Koerber, later Marie Dressler, was a Canadian actress who specialized in vaudeville comedy, and eventually won an Academy Award for Best Actress later in her career. Being the daughter of a musician, she moved to the United States of America in her childhood. At just fourteen years old, she left home to begin her career, lying about her age and sending her mother half of her paycheck. Dressler found great success and was known for her comedic timing and physical comedy, like carrying her male co-stars. She eventually worked on Broadway, where she had a great desire to become a serious actress but was advised to remain in comedy. She went on to star in a few films but again returned to vaudeville, her original career.

Another famous vaudevillian actress was Trixi Friganza, originally born Delia O'Callaghan. She had a famous catchphrase; "You know Trixi with her bag of tricks." She began her career in opera, performing to help provide for her family. The oldest of three daughters, she wanted to help her family financially but had to do it secretly, as female performers were frowned on at the time. She worked largely in comedy and gained acclaim and success due to her willingness to step into other's roles who had fallen ill, and were otherwise unable to perform. In her acts, she often emphasized her plus-size figure, calling herself the "perfect forty-six". Friganza was also a poet and writer. She used many of her performances as ways to raise money to support the poor or disenfranchised and went on record publicly numerous times to support these social causes. Friganza also spent much of her life fighting for women's equality and pushing for self-acceptance for women, both publicly and within themselves, as well as their rights in comparison to men.

Another famous comedienne, one who brought in thousands of audience members with her signature improvisational skills, was May Irwin. She worked from about 1875 to 1914. Originally born Ada Campbell, she began her life on the stage at thirteen years old following the death of her father. She and her older sister created a singing act called the "Irwin Sisters". Many years later, their act had taken off and with performances in both vaudeville and burlesque at famous music halls, until Irwin decided to continue her career on her own. She then changed her approach to vaudeville, performing African-American-influenced songs, even later writing her songs. She introduced her signature in vaudeville, "The Bully Song", which was performed in a Broadway show. This is when she began experimenting with improvisational comedy and quickly found her unique success, even taking her performances global with acts in the U.K.

Black vaudeville

Black performers and patrons participated in a racially segregated vaudeville circuit. An early black theater was founded by a white woman, Amanda Thorp, in Norfolk, Virginia in 1907. Black vaudeville provided an opportunity for black performers to manage their own businesses, as was the case for the Griffin Sisters, Emma and Mabel, after 1913. Later, in the 1920s, many bookings were managed by the Theatre Owners Booking Association.

Immigrant America
In addition to vaudeville's prominence as a form of American entertainment, it reflected the newly evolving urban inner-city culture and interaction of its operators and audience. Making up a large portion of immigration to the United States in the mid-19th century, Irish Americans interacted with established Americans, with the Irish becoming subject to discrimination due to their ethnic physical and cultural characteristics. The ethnic stereotypes of Irish through their greenhorn depiction alluded to their newly arrived status as immigrant Americans, with the stereotype portrayed in avenues of entertainment.

Following the Irish immigration wave, several waves followed in which new immigrants from different backgrounds came in contact with the Irish in America's urban centers. Already settled and being native English speakers, Irish Americans took hold of these advantages and began to assert their positions in the immigrant racial hierarchy based on skin tone and assimilation status, cementing job positions that were previously unavailable to them as recently arrived immigrants. As a result, Irish Americans became prominent in vaudeville entertainment as curators and actors, creating a unique ethnic interplay between Irish American use of self-deprecation as humor and their diverse inner city surroundings.

The interactions between newly arrived immigrants and settled immigrants within the backdrop of the unknown American urban landscape allowed vaudeville to be utilized as an avenue for expression and understanding. The often hostile immigrant experience in their new country was now used for comic relief on the vaudeville stage, where stereotypes of different ethnic groups were perpetuated. The crude stereotypes that emerged were easily identifiable not only by their distinct ethnic cultural attributes, but how those attributes differed from the mainstream established American culture and identity.

Coupled with their historical presence on the English stage for comic relief, and as operators and actors of the vaudeville stage, Irish Americans became interpreters of immigrant cultural images in American popular culture. New arrivals found their ethnic group status defined within the immigrant population and in their new country as a whole by the Irish on stage. Unfortunately, the same interactions between ethnic groups within the close living conditions of cities also created racial tensions which were reflected in vaudeville. Conflict between Irish and African Americans saw the promotion of black-face minstrelsy on the stage, purposefully used to place African Americans beneath the Irish in the racial and social urban hierarchy.

Although the Irish had a strong Celtic presence in vaudeville and in the promotion of ethnic stereotypes, the ethnic groups that they were characterizing also utilized the same humor. As the Irish donned their ethnic costumes, groups such as the Chinese, Italians, Germans and Jews utilized ethnic caricatures to understand themselves as well as the Irish. The urban diversity within the vaudeville stage and audience also reflected their societal status, with the working class constituting two-thirds of the typical vaudeville audience.

The ethnic caricatures that now comprised American humor reflected the positive and negative interactions between ethnic groups in America's cities. The caricatures served as a method of understanding different groups and their societal positions within their cities. The use of the greenhorn immigrant for comedic effect showcased how immigrants were viewed as new arrivals, but also what they could aspire to be. In addition to interpreting visual ethnic caricatures, the Irish American ideal of transitioning from the shanty to the lace curtain became a model of economic upward mobility for immigrant groups.

Selected vaudeville artists

Decline

The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville. This was similar to the advent of free broadcast television's diminishing the cultural and economic strength of the cinema. Cinema was first regularly commercially presented in the US in vaudeville halls. The first public showing of movies projected on a screen took place at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in 1896. Lured by greater salaries and less arduous working conditions, many performers and personalities, such as Al Jolson, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Edgar Bergen, Fanny Brice, Burns and Allen, and Eddie Cantor, used the prominence gained in live variety performance to vault into the new medium of cinema. In doing so, such performers often exhausted in a few moments of screen time the novelty of an act that might have kept them on tour for several years. Other performers who entered in vaudeville's later years, including Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Kate Smith, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Judy Garland, Rose Marie, Sammy Davis Jr., Red Skelton, Larry Storch and The Three Stooges, used vaudeville only as a launching pad for later careers. They left live performance before achieving the national celebrity of earlier vaudeville stars, and found fame in new venues.

The line between live and filmed performances was blurred by the number of vaudeville entrepreneurs who made more or less successful forays into the movie business. For example, Alexander Pantages quickly realized the importance of motion pictures as a form of entertainment. He incorporated them in his shows as early as 1902. Later, he entered into a partnership with the Famous Players–Lasky, a major Hollywood production company and an affiliate of Paramount Pictures.

By the late 1920s, most vaudeville shows included a healthy selection of cinema. Earlier in the century, many vaudevillians, cognizant of the threat represented by cinema, held out hope that the silent nature of the "flickering shadow sweethearts" would preclude their usurpation of the paramount place in the public's affection.  With the introduction of talking pictures in 1926, the burgeoning film studios removed what had remained the chief difference in favor of live theatrical performance: spoken dialogue.  Historian John Kenrick wrote:

Top vaudeville stars filmed their acts for one-time pay-offs, inadvertently helping to speed the death of vaudeville. After all, when "small time" theatres could offer "big time" performers on screen at a nickel a seat, who could ask audiences to pay higher amounts for less impressive live talent? The  RKO studios took over the famed Orpheum vaudeville circuit and swiftly turned it into a chain of full-time movie theatres. The half-century tradition of vaudeville was effectively wiped out within less than four years.

Inevitably, managers further trimmed costs by eliminating the last of the live performances.  Vaudeville also suffered due to the rise of broadcast radio following the greater availability of inexpensive receiver sets later in the decade.  Even the hardiest in the vaudeville industry realized the form was in decline; the perceptive understood the condition to be terminal. The standardized film distribution and talking pictures of the 1930s confirmed the end of vaudeville. By 1930, the vast majority of formerly live theatres had been wired for sound, and none of the major studios were producing silent pictures. For a time, the most luxurious theatres continued to offer live entertainment, but most theatres were forced by the Great Depression to economize.

Some in the industry blamed cinema's drain of talent from the vaudeville circuits for the medium's demise. Others argued that vaudeville had allowed its performances to become too familiar to its famously loyal, now seemingly fickle audiences.

There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly sagging by the late 1920s. Joseph Kennedy Sr. in a hostile buyout, acquired the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theatres Corporation (KAO), which had more than 700 vaudeville theatres across the United States which had begun showing movies.  The shift of New York City's Palace Theatre, vaudeville's center, to an exclusively cinema presentation on 16 November 1932, is often considered to have been the death knell of vaudeville.

Though talk of its resurrection was heard during the 1930s and later, the demise of the supporting apparatus of the circuits and the higher cost of live performance made any large-scale renewal of vaudeville unrealistic.

Architecture
The most striking examples of Gilded Age theatre architecture were commissioned by the big time vaudeville magnates and stood as monuments of their wealth and ambition. Examples of such architecture are the theatres built by impresario Alexander Pantages.  Pantages often used architect B. Marcus Priteca (1881–1971), who in turn regularly worked with muralist Anthony Heinsbergen.  Priteca devised an exotic, neo-classical style that his employer called "Pantages Greek".

Though classic vaudeville reached a zenith of capitalization and sophistication in urban areas dominated by national chains and commodious theatres, small-time vaudeville included countless more intimate and locally controlled houses.  Small-time houses were often converted saloons, rough-hewn theatres, or multi-purpose halls, together catering to a wide range of clientele.  Many small towns had purpose-built theatres. A small yet interesting example might include what is called Grange Halls in northern New England, still being used. These are old-fashioned, wooden buildings with creaky, dimly-lit, wooden stages all of which is meant to offset the isolation of a farming lifestyle. These stages can offer anything from child performers to something called contra-dances to visits by Santa to local, musical talent, to homemade foods such as whoopee pies.

Vaudeville's cultural influence and legacy

Some of the most prominent vaudevillians successfully made the transition to cinema, though others were not as successful.  Some performers such as Bert Lahr fashioned careers out of combining live performance with radio and film roles. Many others later appeared in the Catskill resorts that constituted the "Borscht Belt".

Vaudeville was instrumental in the success of the newer media of film, radio, and television. Comedies of the new era adopted many of the dramatic and musical tropes of classic vaudeville acts. Film comedies of the 1920s through the 1940s used talent from the vaudeville stage and followed a vaudeville aesthetic of variety entertainment, both in Hollywood and in Asia, including China.

The rich repertoire of the vaudeville tradition was mined for prominent prime-time radio variety shows such as The Rudy Vallée Show. The structure of a single host introducing a series of acts became a popular television style and can be seen consistently in the development of television, from The Milton Berle Show in 1948 to Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s. The multi-act format had renewed success in shows such as Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and The Ed Sullivan Show.  Today, performers such as Bill Irwin, a MacArthur Fellow and Tony Award-winning actor, are frequently lauded as "New Vaudevillians".

References to vaudeville and the use of its distinctive argot continue throughout North American popular culture. Words such as "flop" and "gag" were terms created from the vaudeville era and have entered the American idiom. Though not credited often, vaudevillian techniques can commonly be witnessed on television and in movies, remarkably in the recent, worldwide phenomenon of TV shows such as America's Got Talent.

In professional wrestling, there was a noted tag team, based in WWE, called The Vaudevillains.

In 2018, noted film director Christopher Annino, maker of a new silent feature film, Silent Times, founded Vaudeville Con, a gathering to celebrate the history of vaudeville. The first meeting was held in Pawcatuck, Connecticut.

Archives
The records of the Tivoli Theatre are housed at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, with additional personal papers of vaudevillian performers from the Tivoli Theatre, including extensive costume and set design holdings, held by the Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

The American Vaudeville Museum, one of the largest collections of vaudeville memorabilia, is located at the University of Arizona.

The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres in Toronto houses the world's largest collection of vaudeville props and scenery.

The Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward F. Albee Collection housed at the University of Iowa includes a large collection of managers' report books recording and commenting on the lineup and quality of the acts each night.

See also

 American burlesque
 Blackface
 Borscht Belt
 Cabaret
 Chapeaugraphy
 Chautauqua
 Concert party (entertainment)
 Concert saloon
 For Me and My Gal (film)
 Music hall
 Medicine show
 Minstrel show
 Nightclub
 Revue
 Tab show
 Tivoli circuit
 Tom show
 Variety show
 Vaudeville Bellydance

References

External links

 Vaudeville and Variety Collections , held in the Performing Arts Collection , Arts Centre Melbourne.
 Modern day vaudeville theatre in Austin TX
 Vaudeville Ventriloquists
 Virtual Vaudeville
 University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – J. Willis Sayre Photographs
 University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Prior and Norris Troupe Photographs
 University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – 19th Century Actors Photographs
 University of Arizona Libraries The American Vaudeville Museum Archive Digital Exhibit
 University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections – Keith/Albee Vaudeville Theater Collection
 Ruckus! American Entertainments at the Turn of the Twentieth Century From the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
 Hear Gary Stephens on Vaudeville, ICA 1988
 Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections: Vaudeville News (1920–1929)
 Vaudeville Cinema in Hollywood and China
 The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment digitized items from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress
 University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections – American Vaudeville Museum Collection
 Vaudeville to Cinema A short documentary on the history of Vaudeville and how it was eventually replaced by the Cinema

Comedy genres

Vaudeville


Euro War, also known as Macaroni Combat, Macaroni War, Spaghetti Combat, or Spaghetti War, is a broad subgenre of war film that emerged in the mid-1960s. The films were named Euro War because most were European co-productions, most notably and commonly by Italians, as indicated by the subgenre's other nicknames that draw parallels to those films within the mostly Italian Spaghetti Western genre.

The typical team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, and a cast of Italian and Spanish actors and sometimes German and French, sometimes a minor or fading Hollywood star. The films were primarily shot in Europe and later, the Philippines.

History
From the mid-1960s, much like in the case of the Italian spaghetti western in relation to American Hollywood Westerns, the Macaroni Combat film mimicked the success of American films such as The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare. Like spaghetti westerns, Euro War films were characterized by their production in the Italian language, low budgets, added violence, and a recognizable highly fluid and minimalist cinematography. This was partly intentional and partly the context and cultural background of the filmmakers. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the films were almost all set during World War II with a few about mercenaries in Africa following the success of Dark of the Sun and later, The Wild Geese. In the 1980s most entries in the genre were set during the Vietnam War following the success of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now.

Some were also made to capitalize the success of Vietnam War rescue mission movies like Missing in Action, Uncommon Valor and Rambo First Blood Part 2. Some were also made to capitalize on the success of movies having American involvement in Middle East missions against terrorist activities like The Delta Force and Death Before Dishonor, Delta Force Commando part 1. Some were also made to capitalize on the success of Soviet Afghan war movies like Rambo 3 and Delta Force Commando part 2.
Two popular examples of the Italian-made World War II films were Anzio (1968) and Hornets' Nest (1970) with their A-list cast members. Today, one of the better-known films to fit the Macaroni Combat archetype is the 1978 film The Inglorious Bastards directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Influenced heavily by the aforementioned 1967 American film, The Dirty Dozen, it would later inspire Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, an American-produced film influenced by the genre as a whole.

Films

 Some Like It Cold (1960)
 Under Ten Flags (1960)
 Then There Were Three (1961)
 The Best of Enemies (1961)
 La guerra continua  (Warriors Five) (1962)
 Torpedo Bay  (1962)
 Marcia o Crepa (The Legion's Last Patrol / Commando) (1962)
 The Shortest Day (1962)
 I due colonnelli (Two Colonels) (1962)
 The Changing of the Guard (1962)
 Attack and Retreat (Italiani brava gente) (1964)
 War Italian Style (1966)
 Dirty Heroes (1967)
 Desert Commandos (1967)
 Hell in Normandy (1967)
 Commandos (1968)
 Suicide Commandos (1968)
 Quella dannata pattuglia (The Battle of the Damned) (1968)
 Anzio (1968)
 Battle of the Last Panzer (1969)
 The Red Berets (1969)
 Eagles Over London (1969)
 Salt in the Wound (1969)
 Bridge over the Elbe (1969)
 The Battle of El Alamein (1969)
 36 Hours to Hell (1969)
 Desert Assault (1969)
 Hora cero: Operación Rommel (A Bullet For Rommel / The Battle Giants) (1969)
 La legione dei dannati (Battle of the Commandos / Legion of the Damned) (1969)
 Five for Hell (1969)
 War Devils (1969)
 Churchill's Leopards (1970)
 Hornets' Nest (1970)
 Heroes in Hell (1973)
 The Heroes (1973)
 Hell River (1974)
 The Inglorious Bastards (1978)
 Battle Force (1978)
 The Wild Geese Attack Again (1978)
 Tough to Kill (1978)
 From Hell to Victory (1979)
 The Last Hunter (1980)
 Odd Squad (1981)
 Tiger Joe (1982)
 Last Blood (1983)
 Code Name: Wild Geese (1984)
 Kommando Leopard (1985)
 Operation Nam (1986)
 Strike Commando (1987)
 Delta Force Commando (1988)
 Last Platoon (1988)
 Strike Commando 2 (1988)
 Striker (1988)
 Born to Fight (1989)
 Casablanca Express (1989)
 Leathernecks (1989)

Personalities

Actors

 Lewis Collins
 Richard Harrison
 George Hilton
 Klaus Kinski
 Guy Madison
 Frederick Stafford
 Bo Svenson
 Lee Van Cleef
 David Warbeck
 Fred Williamson
 Jack Palance

Directors
 Enzo G. Castellari
 Umberto Lenzi
 Antonio Margheriti
 Roberto Bianchi Montero

See also
 Spaghetti Western
 War film
 Partisan film

References

Further reading

Italian films by genre
Film genres

Euro War


Roland Daniel Dotsch (February 14, 1933 – March 16, 1988) was an American football coach who served primarily in an assistant capacity before becoming the first coach of the United States Football League (USFL)'s Birmingham Stallions on September 2, 1982.

The son of politician James D. Dotsch and Lorna M. née. Boudreau, he played college football at Michigan State University, helping the 1952 Spartans win the national championship, then started during his senior year on Michigan State's squad that captured both the Big Ten Conference and Rose Bowl championships.

Dotsch first entered the coaching ranks at Escanaba High School in Michigan, then from 1958 to 1960, served as defensive coordinator at Northern Michigan University. He then went to the University of Colorado as a defensive backs coach in 1962 before moving to another school in the Big Eight Conference at the University of Missouri, where he served as offensive line coach for four years.

He returned to Northern Michigan as head coach before later taking over as athletic director.  During his coaching stint, Dotsch's teams compiled a 33–15–1 mark.

When Dan Devine, who had hired him at Missouri, became head coach of the Green Bay Packers, he hired Dotsch as offensive line coach on February 22, 1971.  Dotsch remained with the team through four seasons until Devine left to become head coach at the University of Notre Dame at the conclusion of the 1974 NFL season. He moved to coach the New England Patriots linebackers under former college teammate Chuck Fairbanks.

Dotsch was on Tommy Hudspeth's coaching staff with the Detroit Lions until the entire group was dismissed on January 9, 1978. He was hired by the Steelers, and was on the sidelines for their third and fourth Super Bowl titles. Following two more years with the team, Dotsch resigned to accept the head coaching position with the Stallions of the fledgeling USFL.

During the three years of the league's existence, Dotsch was 36–18 and reached the 1984 Eastern Conference title game before losing to the league's eventual champion, the Philadelphia Stars, 20–10.  They would be knocked out of the playoffs in the Eastern Conference semi-finals by the Stars again in 1985, 28–14.

After the league voted to suspend play in 1986 in anticipation of a move to the fall, Dotsch was asked if the Stallions would ever play again. "I just don't know. I never say never, though. It would be a long pull."

Dotsch was also critical of league spending. "Every good coach has a game plan. In this case, the USFL got away from the game plan. There's no question we did, or I'll say the USFL did. I don't think we did or Tampa Bay did. Hindsight is much better than foresight, I know, but things were done that hurt us. We (the Stallions) didn't go crazy. We lost the fewest dollars of any USFL team. We were always the poorest team in the playoffs, but we held our own and I'm proud of that. We did a good job with what we had. We won a lot more than we lost, and that's the biggest thing".

Dotsch returned to the NFL in 1987 as running backs coach for the Minnesota Vikings.  However, just as training camp began, Dotsch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, battling the disease for just over seven months before passing away.

Head coaching record

College

References

1933 births
1988 deaths
American football guards
American football tackles
Colorado Buffaloes football coaches
Detroit Lions coaches
Green Bay Packers coaches
Michigan State Spartans football coaches
Michigan State Spartans football players
Minnesota Vikings coaches
Missouri Tigers football coaches
New England Patriots coaches
Northern Michigan Wildcats football coaches
Pittsburgh Steelers coaches
United States Football League coaches
High school football coaches in Michigan
University of Missouri faculty
People from Delta County, Michigan
Players of American football from Lansing, Michigan
Coaches of American football from Michigan
Deaths from pancreatic cancer in Minnesota

Rollie Dotsch


The Thembu are a tribe that was made to fall under the subgroup of the Xhosa people during the Apartheid period . They are one of the handful of nation groups that speak IsiXhosa in South Africa. In Xhosa the name is abaThembu, aba- being a common prefix for peoples. The current reigning King of the abathembu is King  Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo  whose praise name is Zwelibanzi. The most recognizable Thembu person in Nelson Mandela. The traditional homeland of the Thembu is called Thembuland.

Ethnic groups in South Africa

Thembu people


Andrew Kirkaldy (born 1 March 1976 in St Andrews) is a British racing driver and managing director of McLaren GT.

Career

Single-seaters
Kirkaldy began his career competing in karting, winning the Scottish Junior Championship in 1989 and the Scottish Senior Championship in 1993. He raced in the Formula Vauxhall championship in 1996 and 1997, finishing runner-up in 1997. He also won the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award in that year, which earnt him a prize test with the McLaren Formula One team. He was runner-up in Euroseries Formula Opel in 1998. He raced in the British Formula Three Championship in 1999 and 2000.

Sports cars
In addition to finishing runner-up in the Renault Clio Cup in 2002, Kirkaldy made his FIA GT Championship debut. In 2004 he moved to the British GT Championship, winning the series in 2005 with teammate Nathan Kinch for Scuderia Ecosse. He also made his 24 Hours of Le Mans debut in 2005 for the team. He returned to the FIA GT Championship in 2006 with Scuderia Ecosse, racing in the GT2 class. In 2008, he drove for his CRS Racing team in the championship.

Team AKA & CRS Racing
As well as his racing career, Kirkaldy is a successful team principal, founding his own Team AKA team in 2004. The team ran for four seasons in the British Formula Renault Championship, ending up with a second in the 2006 teams championship. The team also achieved two top-three drivers championship positions with James Jakes, who was third in 2005, and Patrick Hogan, who was second in 2006 only after losing a tie-breaker to Sebastian Hohenthal. In 2007 Chris Niarchos approached Kirkaldy with sponsoring of Team AKA in their fourth season of the British Formula Renault Championship, with the two having previously been team-mates on the Scuderia Ecosse team which competed in the FIA GT Championship. Team AKA then became known as AKA Cobra.

Following the 2007 season, Niarchos' interest in the team expanded as the two wished to enter their own team in not only the FIA GT Championship but the British GT Championship as well, ending their relationship with Scuderia Ecosse. The team was renamed once more and was relaunched as CR Scuderia, reflecting their choice of Italian Ferraris for their entry into grand tourer racing. The team was again renamed for 2009, becoming CRS Racing. Subsequently, CRS agreed a deal with McLaren to develop the GT3 version of the McLaren MP4-12C.

24 Hours of Le Mans results

References

External links

Living people
1976 births
Sportspeople from St Andrews
Scottish racing drivers
British Formula Three Championship drivers
German Formula Three Championship drivers
Atlantic Championship drivers
Formula Renault Eurocup drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
FIA GT Championship drivers
British GT Championship drivers
European Le Mans Series drivers
Blancpain Endurance Series drivers
International GT Open drivers
24 Hours of Spa drivers
Sports car racing team owners
Porsche Carrera Cup GB drivers
ASCAR drivers
People educated at Madras College
CRS Racing drivers
Alan Docking Racing drivers
McLaren people
Paul Stewart Racing drivers

Andrew Kirkaldy (racing driver)


Direct fire or line-of-sight fire refers to firing of a ranged weapon whose projectile is launched directly at a target within the line-of-sight of the user. The firing weapon must have a sighting device and an unobstructed view to the target, which means no obstacles or friendly units can be between it and the target. A weapon engaged in direct fire conversely exposes itself to direct return fire from the target.

This is in contrast to indirect fire, which refers to firing a projectile on a curved ballistic trajectory or delivering self-accelerated munitions capable of long range and various degrees of homing abilities to alter the flight path. Indirect fire does not need a direct line-of-sight to the target because the shots are normally directed by a forward observer. As such, indirect-fire weapons can shoot over obstacles or friendly units and the weapons can be concealed from counter-battery fire.

Description

Examples of direct-fire weapons include most ancient and modern weapons such as slings, bows, firearms, and recoilless rifles. The term is most often used in the context of artillery, such as howitzers and mortars.

Direct fire remained the dominant method of operating artillery throughout most of human history, with indirect fire used for sieges and involving specific siege guns. Technological developments born of the Industrial Revolution and the development of technical practices in the late 19th century led to an appreciation of indirect fire, although it was not until World War I that indirect fire supplanted direct fire as the primary method by which artillery supported the other combat arms. During World War II direct fire remained secondary to indirect fire, although it was used profusely in situations where indirect fire was less effective, and new direct-fire artillery such as anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft guns were developed.

After World War II new technology continued to diminish the role of direct fire; however, in several situations it remains a necessary function on the modern battlefield. One of these is the defense of fixed fortified areas – for example fire support bases – for which specific firing techniques and munitions such as Killer Junior and Beehive anti-personnel rounds were developed. Another is when artillery is forced to defend itself, such as in a surprise attack. This could be the result of rapid maneuvering by ground forces, an attack by airborne troops, or from the lack of defined front lines as found in counterinsurgency operations. Direct-fire artillery can also be massed to counter a penetration by enemy tanks. In particular self-propelled artillery are ideally suited for this role on account of their mobility, armor protection, and faster rate of fire compared to other weapons. A final situation is in urban warfare, where locating the enemy can be difficult, the physical structures give the defenders better protection, and the risk of collateral damage is high. In these cases direct-fire artillery can unleash tremendous firepower to precisely destroy enemy fortified positions. For example, during the Siege of Marawi, the Armed Forces of the Philippines used 105mm M101 howitzers in close-range to combat Abu Sayyaf and Maute Group terrorists who fortified themselves in several buildings.

See also

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Artillery operation
Military terminology

Direct fire


Long Island University is a private, coeducational university with campuses in Brooklyn and Brookville, New York. The Brooklyn campus is known as LIU Brooklyn, while the Brookville campus is branded as LIU Post (formal name: C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University). The university has about 24,170 students. It was founded at the Brooklyn location in 1926; the Post campus followed in 1954. The current president of the university is David J. Steinberg, Ph.D. .

Sports
The athletics teams of the university are called the LIU Sharks. Before the 2019–20 school year, the two LIU campuses operated separate athletic programs. The Brooklyn program, known at various times as "LIU" and "Long Island", and from 2013–14 as "LIU Brooklyn", competed in NCAA Division I under the final name of LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds, with most teams playing in the Northeast Conference (NEC). The Post program, known immediately before the merger as the LIU Post Pioneers, competed in NCAA Division II, primarily in the East Coast Conference. The university merged the two programs in July 2019, with some sports based in Brooklyn and others at Post. The new Sharks program inherited Brooklyn's Division I and NEC memberships. All varsity sports that had been sponsored by either campus before the merger continue to be sponsored by the current LIU program, and the university has added several more sports since the merger.

As of the upcoming 2020–21 school year, LIU will sponsor 31 NCAA teams, 12 for men and 19 for women, plus a varsity esports team outside of NCAA control. Most teams compete in the NEC, but LIU has many affiliations outside the NEC in sports not sponsored by that league:
 Women's equestrianism, women's fencing — Independent (no conference affiliation)
 Women's gymnastics (starting in 2020–21) — East Atlantic Gymnastics League
 Men's ice hockey (starting in 2020–21) — No affiliation announced yet
 Women's ice hockey — New England Women's Hockey Alliance
 Women's rugby (union) — National Intercollegiate Rugby Association
 Women's water polo — Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
 Men's wrestling — Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association

Other websites
Long Island University's Official website
Official LIU Sharks website

Northeast Conference
1926 establishments in the United States
1920s establishments in New York (state)
Colleges and universities in New York (state)

Long Island University


The Character and Death of Mrs. Hester Ann Rogers is a Methodist tract from 1794, still in print in 2008. The text is a publication of the sermon given by the Reverend Thomas Coke upon the death of the Methodist writer Hester Rogers, with an appendix written by her husband James Rogers; there is a third section, a "Supplement to the Appendix—consisting of Miscellaneous Extracts from the Journals of Mrs. Hester Ann Rogers." Coke's sermon and James Rogers' appendix both contain published passages from Hester Rogers' own book entitled A Short Account of the Experience of Mrs. H.A. Rogers, Written by Herself as well as unpublished excerpts from her journals and correspondence. The history of the "Supplement to the Appendix" is not clear.

Thomas Coke's sermon is divided into five sections:

First, Give an Explication of the Text.
Secondly, Consider the grand point held forth to our view, —the Certainty of Death.
Thirdly, Lay down some consideration against the Fear of Death, for the use and comfort of believers
Fourthly, Draw some Inferences from the foregoing heads; and,
Lastly, Present you with an epitome of the Experience, Death, and Character of our deceased Friend

Editions

The first edition was printed in 1794 by the Conference Office, London. G. Story is listed as the agent; the book was sold by George Whitfield at the New Chapel and at the "Methodist Chapels in Town and Country." A second edition was printed in 1796 by J. Belcher in Birmingham. The third edition dates from 1815, printed at the Conference Office in London by Thomas Cordeux. There have been dozens of subsequent editions.

Although The Character and Death can be considered as a book unto itself, Vicki Tolar Collins, Associate Professor of English at Oregon State University and expert on the works of Hester Ann Rogers, considers it "the most lengthy male text accreted to The [Short] Account" (Hester Rogers' original book). Rogers' work went through more than 71 editions after her death. The first edition, published in 1793, contained only her core narrative. Subsequent editions, published after both Hester Rogers' and John Wesley's death, add other texts to the core text, sometimes editing or abridging the core text as well. Other than Thomas Coke and James Rogers' version, other versions include unpublished journal passages, edited correspondence between Hester and John Wesley, poems written by women in her group, a printer's advertisement, and Rogers' spiritual letter.

In modern editions, the sermon is appended to Rogers' own book.

The author

The Character and Death is a wholly Methodist work; the author(s), printer, subject matter, and rhetorical context are all products of early Wesleyan Methodism. Thomas Coke, the author, was born in Wales in 1747 and died sixty-seven years later on a voyage to India where he had hoped to fund his own Methodist missions. Before Coke met John Wesley and joined the Methodists in 1777, he had been an Anglican. Coke subsequently became the first bishop of the Methodist Church and the founder of its missions. Coke visited the Americas nine times and wrote many accounts about his trips.  Coke's most memorable works include his Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, A History of the West Indies, and the Life of John Wesley; he also published several volumes of his own sermons.

The Character and Death is the only one of Coke's books published by the Wesleyan Conference Office. His other books were either published by general printers or other Methodist printers. However, all foreign editions of The Character and Death were published by Methodist printers: for example, in 1813 an edition of the book was published in New York by the Methodist Connection in the United States. The Character and Death appears only to have been printed in small format.

The publisher

Although the name of the printer which appeared on the first and last pages of the book is the "Conference Office," the full title of the printer was the "Wesleyan Conference Office." The Wesleyan Conference office published books on John Wesley, Methodism, missionary voyages, and hymns. OCLC/WorldCat lists nine hundred and ten entries under "Printer: Wesleyan Conference Office" but many of these entries are editions of the same book. Their first book, printed in 1745, was an edition of John Wesley's An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason. The book billed itself as a "defense of Methodism, describing the evils of the times in society and the church."

The Wesleyan Conference office did not print books larger than the octavo format; they were a specialized printer interested in printing small, cheap books on Methodism for sale in Methodist churches and bookstores. Despite the fact that these books were certainly brought on missions to help convert natives, the Wesleyan Conference office published exclusively in English. George Whitfield, listed as the book's agent, was a minister in the Church of England and one of the leaders of the Methodist movement.  John Wesleyan considered Mrs. Hester Ann Rogers, the subject of the book, to be the ideal Methodist woman: not only did she embody Methodist morals, she also engaged in the avid promotion of Methodism at the side of her husband, a Wesleyan itinerant.

Significance

Methodism and printing

The late-eighteenth century London printing scene provides some clues as to why the Wesleyan Conference Office printed this tract. London at this time was a hotbed of printing presses: in 1724 there were only seventy-five printing presses, but by 1760 this number had shot up to over two hundred.  Books had to be cheap, fresh, and quick to read; people were accustomed to sensationalized political newspapers, editorial tracts, and dailies—a shorter book, rather than a lengthy tome, was more suited to the intellectual culture of the time. As a printed book, The Character and Death fits a cultural trend; as a religious book, it was revolutionary.

Theological books in the eighteenth century were heavy, expensive, and dull, and preachers remained in one parish and did not travel. John Wesley's revolutionary approach was to send his ministers on circuits to the masses, laden with books that were small, cheap and written in a popular style.  Wesley supported himself through his publishing empire and bade his U.S. followers to use his press as well. Itinerant Methodists such as Rogers' husband would have carried books with them to sell, supplementing their meagre stipends.  Since every minister was also a subscription agent, the fact that Minister George Whitfield was listed as the book's agent was customary of Wesley's system.

Wesley was also revolutionary in that he encouraged journal-keeping, not only by preachers but also by ordinary Methodist society members, both men and women. Wesley believed that the discipline in journal-writing was central to the "method" of individual spiritual growth in Methodism. However, the spiritual journal of Hester Ann Rogers was the only major English publication of a woman's journal. Although Rogers published A Short Account after Wesley's death, Wesley himself intended to serve as production authority over her book.

Early Methodism and rhetoric

John Wesley's Methodism helped carve a new space for women's discourse in the public religious arena; his religious innovations created "spaces, sanctions, and support for women to speak in public and write for publication." Wesley's Methodism was based a new method of religion, new material practices, and new institutional forms. Vicki Tolar Collins makes a distinction between Wesley's Methodism and post-Wesley Methodism: "as long as John Wesley was alive to protect the women preachers and control the men who opposed them, Methodist women were allowed to speak in public; after Wesley's death the preaching women were silenced […]."  Methodism was a rhetorically based movement—converts were won through itinerant's emotional sermons and a barrage of printed narratives; Wesley enjoyed and respected women and believed that they should have a place within Methodist rhetoric. Women were encouraged to voice their opinion publicly; many women led Methodist groups; a few Methodist women interpreted the Bible themselves and preached. Women preachers did face criticism, but with the support of their leader, they became more active and visible in the 1770s and 1780s.

The Character and Death, contextualized

After Wesley died, preaching women were silenced under the new authority of a group of men. Under this new institutional strategy, Hester Ann Rogers was subsequently idealized and promoted as a nonpreaching woman and model Methodist. Hester Ann Rogers did not preach, but she did lead classes and pray publicly—two unproblematic activities. Wesley had intended Rogers' book to be an exemplary female account of "Christian perfection" or union with God in the mist of life rather than at the moment of death; Wesley considered that Hester Ann Rogers was one of the few people to have achieved this state.

Rogers' original A Short Account was focused purely on her daily dealings with God and she barely mentioned her marriage, children, or leadership of Methodist groups.  The group of post-Wesley authorities, with their new agenda, accreted texts to Roger's original work which would highlight her non-preaching religiousness and expand on her maternal and wifely role. Thomas Coke's sermon, The Character and Death, plays directly into this role. In one passage, Coke notes that

her maternal care and affection shone equally bright. Though she devoted much of her time to religious duties in public and private, yet nothing seemed to be left undone which could maker her children comfortable and happy. She even prevented all their wants; and was equally, nay, if it were possible, more attentive to Mr. Roger's children by his former wife, than to her own.

Coke also uses one of Rogers' unpublished journal entries to cite her experience with childbirth. Vicki Collins claims that Coke's descriptions of Rogers' unwavering filial loyalty and wifely devotion are factually misrepresented: Coke clearly took liberties with Rogers' life in order to conform to the new Methodist agenda. Coke also stresses the fact that Rogers did not "presume to preach," content to spend her time on her writing: "writing, seems to be her peculiar talent; and she took great delight therein, even from her childhood. And yet, she never, on that account, or, indeed, on any other, once neglected any part of her domestic duty."

James Rogers' appendix to Coke's sermon follows the same model: he describes her Bible study, her visits to the sick, her public prayer, and her small group leadership. He also emphasized the fact that she never "took a text" or preached. Rogers also stresses the importance of their marriage through anecdotes as well as terms of endearment such as "my dear companion," "best helpmate," "one of the most valuable and faithful wives,' "best help in spiritual things," "ever my comforter," "the centre and constant spring of all my domestic happiness" and "faithful love."   While Hester Rogers leaves her marital life and public duties out of her own biography, these are the very subjects which her husband, James Rogers, emphasizes in his eulogy.

Explicitly, The Character and Death is a eulogy of a model Methodist woman. Implicitly, it was rife with political agenda; Coke used his sermon to reaffirm the new direction Methodism was taking in regards to women; James Rogers subsequently reassured women that by retracting from their preaching roles they would find satisfying marital intimacy, praise from their spouse, and the church's approval. The story of The Character and Death is one of an institution—Methodism—and how it used, changed, produced, and distributed Rogers' text to shape (and limit) women's roles, women's discourse, and women's lives in Methodist communities.

References

Bibliography
E. Dorothy Graham, 'Rogers , Hester Ann (1756–1794)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 2004
Coke, Thomas. The Character and Death of Mrs. Hester Ann Rogers: Set Forth in a Sermon, Preached on the Occasion in Spitalfiels-Chapl; London, on Sunday, Oct. 26, 1794. London: Printed at the Conference Office, G. Story, sold by G. Whitfield, 1794.
 An Account of the Experience of Hester Ann Rogers, and her Funeral Sermon, Thomas Coke and Hester Ann Rogers, BiblioBazaar 2008, ; Bastian Books (2008),

Christian sermons
History of Methodism
18th-century Christian texts
Methodist texts
1794 non-fiction books