登入
選單
返回
Google圖書搜尋
Lady Romeo
Tana Wojczuk
其他書名
The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity
出版
Simon and Schuster
, 2021-06-08
主題
Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts
Biography & Autobiography / Women
Drama / Shakespeare
Performing Arts / Theater / General
Social Science / LGBTQ+ Studies / Lesbian Studies
ISBN
1501199536
9781501199530
URL
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=4p0tEAAAQBAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBook
SAMPLE
註釋
Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award
Finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Finalist for the Marfield Prize
For fans of
Book of Ages
and
American Eve
, this “lively, illuminating new biography” (
The Boston Globe
) of 19th-century queer actress Charlotte Cushman portrays a “brisk, beautifully crafted life” (Stacy Schiff, bestselling author of
The Witches
and
Cleopatra
) that riveted New York City and made headlines across America.
All her life, Charlotte Cushman refused to submit to others’ expectations. Raised in Boston at the time of the transcendentalists, a series of disasters cleared the way for her life on the stage—a path she eagerly took, rejecting marriage and creating a life of adventure, playing the role of the hero in and out of the theater as she traveled to New Orleans and New York City, and eventually to London and back to build a successful career. Her Hamlet, Romeo, Lady Macbeth, and Nancy Sykes from
Oliver Twist
became canon, impressing Louisa May Alcott, who later based a character on her in
Jo’s Boys
, and Walt Whitman, who raved about “the towering grandeur of her genius” in his columns for the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
. She acted alongside Edwin and John Wilkes Booth—supposedly giving the latter a scar on his neck that was later used to identify him as President Lincoln’s assassin—and visited frequently with the Great Emancipator himself, who was a devoted Shakespeare fan and admirer of Cushman’s work. Her wife immortalized her in the angel at the top of Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain; worldwide, she was “a lady universally acknowledged as the greatest living tragic actress.” Behind the scenes, she was equally radical, making an independent income, supporting her family, creating one of the first bohemian artists’ colonies abroad, and living publicly as a queer woman. And yet, her name has since faded into the shadows.
Now, her story comes to brilliant life with Tana Wojczuk’s
Lady Romeo
, an exhilarating and enlightening biography of the 19th-century trailblazer. With new research and rarely seen letters and documents, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of 1800s New York City and featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries who changed the cultural landscape of America forever. The story of an astonishing and uniquely American life,
Lady Romeo
reveals one of the most remarkable forgotten figures in our history and restores her to center stage, where she belongs.