First published 2010
Michael Holroyd examines the intertwined lives of Victorian theater's most celebrated figures. Ellen Terry began as a child bride to a Pre-Raphaelite painter before becoming the ethereal beauty who captivated audiences and inspired George Bernard Shaw from afar. Henry Irving transformed from a stammering merchant's clerk into one of history's greatest actor-managers. Together they built London's Lyceum Theatre into an artistic powerhouse, with Bram Stoker serving as their manager before writing Dracula. Their celebrity extended to America through wildly successful tours, but their consuming professional lives damaged their children. Irving's sons lived in his shadow while Terry's feminist daughter Edy created an avant-garde theater and lesbian community. Edy's son Edward Gordon Craig possessed extraordinary gifts as a theatrical designer yet struggled to fulfill his potential, collaborating with Stanislavski on a transformative Hamlet production while fathering thirteen children by eight women, including one with dancer Isadora Duncan. Holroyd weaves together a century of cultural transformation through these two families who challenged Victorian conventions.
Genres: biography, drama, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, generational-saga
Setting: London, Lyceum Theatre, America
Period: Victorian Era
666 pages · Kindle Edition · Farrar, Straus and Giroux