On 3 August 1857, Christy Minstrels perform at St. James’s Theater, where they entertained audiences for the next twelve months with song, dance, and comic dialogue. Images of the minstrels and their stock characters circulated throughout print culture that year in multiple forms, from wood-engraved prints to photographs. Image: Photograph, Minstrel Show Performers Rollin Howard (in wench costume) and George Griffin, circa 1855. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “The Moxon Tennyson as Textual Event: 1857, Wood Engraving, and Visual Culture”

An excited audience filled the St James’s Theatre (King Street, London) on the first night following its complete refurbishment. The theatre's new telegraphic address, “Ruritania”, was a tribute to the play that paid for the lavish remodelling: George Alexander’s adaption of The Prisoner of Zenda (January 1896). Other plays staged at St. James’s included Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (May 1893) and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (February 1895).

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Nicholas Daly, "Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (April, 1894) and the Rise of Ruritanian Fiction"

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Renata Kobetts Miller, “The Cultural Work of Drama Criticism in the Early 1890s”