In this volume Strindberg's accomplishments as a dramatist are set against his achievements in other fields, as an autobiographer, painter, letter writer and theatre director. There are studies of individual plays, in which Strindberg's theatre is related both to naturalism and the theatre of the absurd, and of the role played by his life-long interest in historical drama as a means of mirroring his own experience. Other essays consider the problems posed by Strindberg's preoccupation with converting his own life into literature and the relationship between his later plays and the musical Expressionism of Schoenberg and Berg as well as the importance he placed on letter-writing as a model for writing of all kinds; these letters are also used to explore his ideas about acting and theatre generally. A recurring concern is with the extraordinary period of mental and emotional turmoil, known as the Inferno Crisis, in which Strindberg refashioned himself as a writer; not least through his ground-breaking work as a painter.
The collection is prefaced by an account of the difficulties Strindberg's works have encountered in their reception in England and concludes with a 'penance for Strindberg' in the form of a wide-ranging study of the nineteenth-century actress that re-examines the concern with character and theatricality of the earlier essays in a new context.