We’ve made a chronological list of some of our favorites. The concession stand is all you.

‘Mansfield Park,’ by Jane Austen

This 1814 novel has never enjoyed the obsessive fandom other Austen books attract. Blame its inhibited heroine, Fanny Price. But I love “Mansfield Park,” because it makes theater dangerous. In the book’s first half, the estate’s young people decide to stage a private production of August von Kotzebue’s “Lover’s Vows,” a racy romantic drama about illegitimacy and sexual desire. (Because Fanny is no fun, Fanny disapproves.) In fleet scenes, Austen captures the excitement of rehearsal, the frisson of “showmance” and the paradox of theater as both liberating and distorting. ALEXIS SOLOSKI

‘Theatre,’ by W. Somerset Maugham

Elegant and bitchy, this acid Maugham comedy, published in 1937, describes a London diva threatened by a young rival who covets both her young lover and her career. Some will know this story from Istvan Szabo’s 2004 movie, “Being Julia,” starring a splendid Annette Bening, but the novel has its own considerable charms, particularly a late scene in which Julia outclasses her adversary by means of the perfect dress. And then celebrates by eating carbs. Julia’s son complains that his parents have warped him by raising him in a world of make-believe. But make-believe, Julia argues, “is the only reality.” SOLOSKI

‘The Swish of the Curtain,’ by Pamela Brown

In 1938, a 14-year-old Pamela Brown began writing this book, the first of the Blue Door series. Three years later, as a wartime evacuee, she published it and used the proceeds to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. One of the loveliest children’s books about young actors (alongside Noel Streatfeild’s Gemma series), it follows a group of seven children in the English town of Fenchester who discover an abandoned theater. After fixing up the place, they begin to invent and rehearse their own theatricals, discovering various talents — writing, costuming, stage design. The adventures are gentle and the children’s personalities — sometimes generous, sometimes bratty — appealingly real. SOLOSKI

‘Next Season,’ by Michael Blakemore

The acting job pays a paltry 16 pounds a week, but Sam Beresford accepts it eagerly, heading north from London to spend the 1959 season in a seaside repertory company, where ambition, duplicity and jealousy are far more plentiful than juicy roles. Blakemore, the director who won Tony Awards for “Copenhagen” and “Kiss Me, Kate,” writes with marvelous insight and delicious ease, chronicling the soaring joys and petty miseries of a little-known actor’s life. But this isn’t an insiders-only book — and the roman à clef gossip it sparked when it came out in 1968 still adds to our pleasure in it. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

‘Wise Children,’ by Angela Carter

Like her equally wondrous “Nights at the Circus,” Carter’s 1991 magical realist comedy is both a cracking picaresque and a meditation on what it means when art and life commingle. Narrated by Dora Chance, a twin who has lived 75 years as a trifling theater and film star, it details the adventures of the Chance and Hazard families, clans given to twins, theatricality and convoluted paternity claims. The plot, which tips its hat to Shakespeare’s comedies, is largely impenetrable, but Carter delivers its zany twists and turns with sweet-bitter affection. Dora’s fervent motto: “What a joy it is to dance and sing.” SOLOSKI