Introduction: Re-Evaluating the AFL

This chapter introduces the Actresses' Franchise League and the archival research process and methodology of the author, and considers how the League has been portrayed in previous scholarship and marginalised in theatre historise. It tackles areas of contemporary historiographic concern around autobiographical material, digital research and intertheatricality, and posits that the story of the League has hitherto fallen between suffrage and theatre histories. This chapter also details the suffrage plays republished, researched and examined by scholars to date, and argues that a re-evaluation of the work of the organisation is both timely and necessary.