Before the careers of audacious promoters like P. T. Barnum, sensational blackface minstrel performers, and renowned authors such as Washington Irving and Mark Twain brought about an entertainment boom in the nineteenth century, the cultural phenomenon of mass-marketed celebrity had a slow start in America. For much of the eighteenth century, the colonies lacked the infrastructure to foster a cultural environment in which professional performers could flourish. The shuttering of venues during the Revolutionary War hampered what entertainment did exist in cities such as Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The age of American musical celebrity dawned only in the 1780s and 1790s, but its essential features were not native to the new nation. Musical life in the early American republic relied heavily on European performers and repertory, and transatlantic émigré performers nurtured the marketplace for celebrity in America. Borrowing conventions from Britain, transatlantic performers engaged in savvy self-commodification to whet audiences’ appetites not just for the latest music from Europe but for renowned performers as well.

Yet the United States was not a tabula rasa; performers found themselves engaging in an active, often contentious public sphere in which the comportment of public figures—especially women—fed into larger debates about what society in the new republic would be like. Female performers learned to pick careful paths across the potentially treacherous public stage. Reputations and livelihoods were at stake. Yet even in the midst of fulminating debates over whether and how women should participate in the public sphere, the visible presence of female performers was undeniable proof of women's agency. Occasionally, female actors and playwrights used their position in the public eye to participate actively in political debates. Most notably, Susanna Rowson used her renown as a playwright, an actress, and the author of the bestselling novel Charlotte Temple to advocate for women's education and equality in the 1790s. Yet Rowson was exceptional compared to the many other performers who elected to be more circumspect in the way they crafted their public personas. Indeed, many performing women obfuscated their power on the stage—and thus mitigated possible censure—by hiding behind conventions of demure femininity. Ironically, by sublimating their agency, female performers were able to earn livings for themselves, empowered by their astuteness in making career decisions and deft ability to manipulate their public images.