The Great European Stage Directors Set 1 offers an authoritative account of the work, lineage and legacy of the major theatre directors from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Across the four volumes and the companion series Set 2: Post-1950, it provides a uniquely rich study of the genealogy and development of a practice through focus on individual directors and the wider context and artform in which they worked. For professional practitioners and those developing their skills, as well as those engaged in the analysis of theatre practices, forms and history, it will prove an essential resource.

Each volume provides substantial treatment of three major directors, with each director considered by two specialists, combining analysis of the director's practical craft with accounts of the historical, cultural and theoretical context of their practice. Links between the featured directors and other artists and directors from the period are traced to round out the picture of influences and artistic development.

Volume 1: Antoine, Stanislavski and Saint-Denis (edited by Professor Peta Tait, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia): the engagement with 'realism'

Volume 2: Meyerhold, Piscator, Brecht (edited by Professor David Barnett, University of York, UK): directors' experiments with understandings of 'the political' in the theatre - in acting practice, scenic arrangement and audience positioning

Volume 3: Copeau, Komisarjevsky, Guthrie (edited by Professor Jonathan Pitches, University of Leeds, UK): the director as migrant shaping new approaches to the classics

Volume 4: Reinhardt, Jessner, Barker (edited by Professor Michael Patterson, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK): the engagement with aesthetic modernism as part of a set of formal languages, leading to new approaches to the expressive apparatus