Mrs Jordan's Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King

Mrs Jordan's Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King

by Claire Tomalin (Author)

Synopsis

Acclaimed as the greatest comic actress of her day, Dora Jordan played a quite different role off-stage as lover to the future king, William IV, third son of George III. In fact, Dora bore no less than ten children and the couple lived happily in a villa on the Thames until William bowed to pressure and abandoned her. Making full use of Dora's letters to William, Claire Tomalin vividly re-creates the royal, political and theatrical worlds of late eighteenth-century England. The story of how Dora moved between stage and home, of how she battled for her family and her career makes a classic tale of royal perfidy and womanly courage. 'Intelligent, finely made and wonderfully readable. As gripping as the best fiction' - Jan Dalley, "Independent on Sunday".

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 448
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 04 Dec 2003

ISBN 10: 0140159231
ISBN 13: 9780140159233

Media Reviews
'This is a riveting biography...[It] conjures up a rich, alluring period which, in its brittle decadence and love of scandal and flamboyance, often seems closer than the nineteenth century to our own times...the wit and razzle-dazzle of Drury Lane...the cat's cradle of partner swapping among the Sheridans, the Royals and Dora recalls Cosi fan tutte...It is the most haunting biography I have read this year.' -- Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times 'A brilliant book, even better, if possible, than the author's previous study of Dickens's mistress, The Invisible Woman.' -- Antonia Fraser, Literary Review 'Compelling...beautifully constructed... exceptionally well-written and informed by a vivid sense of the past.' -- John Gross, Sunday Telegraph 'An admirable biography...It is hard to find a fault in her performance. It is one her subject would have esteemed for its technique, brio and human warmth.' -- Pat Rogers, Times Literary Supplement
Author Bio
Claire Tomalin was literary editor of the New Statesman then the Sunday Times before leaving to become a full-time writer. Her first book, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, won the Whitbread First Book Award, and she has since written a number of highly acclaimed and bestselling biographies. They include Jane Austen: A Life, The Invisible Woman, a definitive account of Dickens' relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, which won three major literary awards, and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self was Whitbread Book of the Year in 2002. In the highly acclaimed Charles Dickens: A Life, she presents a full-scale biography of our greatest novelist. She is married to the writer Michael Frayn.