A very good copy of the scarce First Edition of this important primary text for historians of British Music Hall and 19th-century Popular Culture written by one of its active participants and unwitingly exposing the nostalgic and deeply offensive nature of the British Entertainment Industry of the period. Imported from a racist America as far back as 1836, when the American performer T.D. Rice first brought his blackface character to the London stage it sadly and quickly became endemic in British seaside resorts, music halls, and theatres with consequences which we see today. Large 8vo.10"X7" 256pps Profusely illustrated with 64 pages of black & white plates of the minstrel-show stars of the day, reproductions of cartoon illustrations, playbills, stage scenes, etc