She became a society star, met Marie Antoinette, and was trendsetting in bringing the latest fashion from Paris.She then established herself as an author writing poetry, essays, journalism and novels. Painted by Reynolds and Gainsborough Mary's beauty was captured by the most famous painters of her day. The young Prince of Wales, later King George IV, fell in love with her, the pair was known throughout the nation as Perdita & Florizel. As a natural beauty and gifted actress she shone on the stage in plays arranged by Sheridan. However, from the former she was acquainted with Samuel Johnson and from the latter she was befriended by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Mary Robinson (1757 - 1800) lived a brilliant career.
Besides, for the canon, she lived in between two major literary periods - 'The Age of Reason and The Romantic Period' and belonged to neither. As Claire Harman's book shows even Jane Austen was nearly buried in posterity. She came from a humble background, had a short career in the theatre and an equally short fling with the Prince of Wales, both disreputable affairs in her time, and lived in an age when most women went unnoticed.
This authoritative and engaging book presents a fascinating portrait of a woman who was variously darling of the London stage, a poet whose work was admired by Coleridge and a mistress to the most powerful men in England, and yet whose fortunes were nevertheless precarious, always on the brink of being squandered through recklessness, excess and passion. She later used his copious love letters for blackmail. On her release, Mary quickly became one of the most popular actresses of the day, famously playing Perdita in The Winter’s Tale for a rapt audience that included the Prince of Wales, who fell madly in love with her. His dissipated lifestyle landed the couple and their baby in debtors' prison, where Mary wrote her first book of poetry and met lifelong friend Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire. After being raised by a middle-class father, Mary was married, at age fourteen, to Thomas Robinson. One of the most flamboyant women of the late-eighteenth century, Mary Robinson's life was marked by reversals of fortune.
Sex, fame and scandal in the theatrical, literary and social circles of late-eighteenth-century England.
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