Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Fanny Abington as Prue in Congreve's Love for Love, her most famous comic role, 1771 Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Paul Mellon Collection. Photo by Richard Caspole, Yale Center for British Art. Enter Fanny Abington, stage right... Born Frances Barton, her story was not so different in its particulars from her predecessors Kitty Fisher and Nelly O’Brien. She apparently filled the void caused in the artist’s life by the premature deaths of his loveliest and most favorite models and they became very close. She was to outlive him by 23 years. Frances Barton/Fanny Abington (1737-1815) was, in looks, a far cry from the refined and classic beauty of Kitty Fisher and Nelly O’Brien. Her features were on the cute side: pert and elfin. Born into poverty in London’s Drury Lane, she was the daughter of either a cobbler or a mercenary/private soldier. She sold flowers in Covent Garden as a child (shades of My Fair Lady!), earning herself the nickname of Nosegay Fan. She later be...

Cast & Crew Alexander Korda...... Director Vivien Leigh as Emma Hart, Lady Hamilton Laurence Olivier as Horatio Nelson Alan Mowbray as Sir William Hamilton Sara Allgood as Mrs. Cadogan-Lyon Gladys Cooper as Lady Frances Nelson Henry Wilcoxon as Captain Hardy Heather Angel as Mary Smith Halliwell Hobbes as Reverend Nelson Gilbert Emery as Lord Spencer Miles Mander as Lord Keith Ronald Sinclair as Josiah Backstory:  In 1940, Britian had been at war with Germany for a year. That Hamilton Woman was conceived by British/Hungarian producer Alexander Korda as propaganda, equating the British fiight against Napoleon with the fight against Hitler. It was his idea to team Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, real-life lovers, as their historical counterparts Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson. Vivien still owed Korda one more film under her contract. This would be the last film that Vivien and Oliver would make together. The script was written quickly by RC Sheriff (with help ...

And the winner of DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL is Celtic Lady! I will be emailing you shortly for your address. Thanks again to everyone that entered!

From the back cover: Mitchelstown Castle in County Cork, seat of the notorious Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family, fairly hums with intrigue. The new young governess, Mary Wollstonecraft, witnesses a stabbing and attends a pagan bonfire at which an illegitimate sprig of the nobility is killed. When the young Irishman Liam Donovan, who hated the aristocratic rogue for seducing his niece, becomes the prime suspect for his murder, Mary - ever champion of the oppressed, and susceptible to Liam's charms - determines to prove him innocent. My thoughts:  When I read about this book on the blog Reading the Past, I was intrigued. Mysteries with real life historical personages as the detectives are big right now, with series starring Jane Austen, Abigail Adams, and Beau Brummel on the shelves. I've also done a great deal of reading on Mary Wollstonecraft while researching SCANDALOUS WOMEN, and I thought the idea of Mary as a detective was fascinating. Most people know Mary Wollst...

Scandalous Women is happy to welcome back author Jo Manning on some of the Scandalous Women who modeled for painter Joshua Reynolds. This week, courtesan Nelly O'Brien. Not much is known about the courtesan Nelly O’Brien, but she looms large in any discussion of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ favorite sitters. Like Kitty Fisher, Nelly O’Brien is portrayed with an affection and warmth that seems to be lacking in his portraits of society damsels and wives. The two portraits painted during the 1760s glow with the same radiance as his portraits of Kitty Fisher. Nelly, who began her career as an actress before discovering the more lucrative profession of courtesan, was considered a rival of Kitty’s, but she moved in very high circles indeed as a mistress of the profligate peer George Richard St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke. “Bully” Bolingbroke was in an unhappy marriage with Lady Diana Spencer (the first Lady Diana Spencer) and had had a long string of chere amies. It is safe to say that N...

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome Nancy Woodruff , author of the new book which came out yesterday, HIS WIFE'S AFFAIR. I first discovered Dora Jordan via a portrait hanging at Apsley House in London. The Apsley House tour guide told such a fascinating story of Dora Jordan’s life that I couldn’t believe I had never heard of this woman before. Since a biography had already been written—brilliantly, by Claire Tomalin—I knew I had to find a way to fit Dora Jordan into my fiction and I hit upon the idea of having my modern heroine, an actress, portray her in a one-woman show. Of course I then had to actually write the one-woman show, and find a way to fit it into my novel, My Wife’s Affair. Dora Jordan came from a family of actors, and she left her native Ireland to work in England at around age twenty. At the time, she was pregnant with her first child, the product of a seduction or quite possibly a rape, and she wandered around the north of England with a theatre company. Af...

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome author Mary Sharratt to the blog. In popular imagination, the figure of a witch is accompanied by her familiar, a black cat. Is there any historical authenticity behind this cliché? Our ancestors in the 16th and 17th centuries believed that magic was real. Not only the poor and ignorant believed in witchcraft and the spirit world—rich and educated people believed in spellcraft just as strongly. Cunning folk were men and women who used charms and herbal cures to heal, foretell the future, and find the location of stolen property. What they did was illegal—sorcery was a hanging offence—but few were arrested. The need for the services they provided was too great. Doctors were so expensive that only the very rich could afford them and the “physick” of this era involved bleeding patients with lancets and using dangerous medicines such as mercury—your local village healer with her herbal charms was far less likely to kill you. Those who used thei...

Here's a round-up of a few articles that I've found on the Internet recently about some pretty interesting women. I'd like to thank RWA NYC member Mari Miller-Lamb for posting the link to this article on Stanford professor, Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, an early researcher into the sex lives of women. Take that Dr. Kinsey! You can read the article here . Thanks to Janet Mullany over at the Risky Regencies for letting readers know that a lost memoir by Claire Clairmont, lover of Lord Byron and step-sister of Mary Shelley was recently found in The New York Public Library according to the Daily Mail in the UK You can read the article here . Interesting sidebar to this story, when Claire Clairmont was an elderly woman, living in Florence, she was contacted by an American Shelley groupie named Captain Edwards Silsbee. Silsbee was an absolute fanatic about all things Shelley. He was known to declaim lines of his poetry in the middle of dinner parties, wanted to own everything that...

Synopsis: Bess Southerns, an improverished widow living in Pendle Forest, is haunted by visions and gains a reputation as a cunning woman. Drawing on the Catholic folk magic of her youth, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future. As she ages, she instructs her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft, as well as her best friend, who ultimately turns to dark magic. When a peddlar suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate, eager to make his name as a witch finder, plays neighbors and family membes against one another until suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights. My thoughts: I was very excited to get the chance to review Mary Sharratt's newest novel DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL. There has been a plethora of excellent historical fiction lately and DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL belongs at the top of the list. It was certainly refreshing to read a book that had nothing really to do with The Tudors! Before I read the novel, I had never heard...

Thanks to random.org, the winner of Christy English's gorgeous debut novel The Queen's Pawn is, drumroll please: Nancy Look for an email from me shortly regarding your address. Thanks to everyone who entered.

Scandalous Women is pleased to once again have guest blogger Talia Weisberg to give us the 411 on Jeanette Rankin. There have been women in governmental positions since ancient times. Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Jezebel, Salome Alexandra, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella I, Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, and Victoria are just a few examples. America has also had its share of women in government; Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are two of thousands currently in office. Ninety-six of those women are in Congress. The road to getting them there has been a long one, begun by Jeanette Rankin in 1917. Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, opened the door for women to enter politics in the United States and worldwide. Jeanette Rankin (sometimes spelled Jeannette) was born on a ranch near Missoula, Montana on June 11, 1880. She helped her parents run the ranch and raise her five younger siblings, which gave her the confidence that she could take charge and le...

Happy Birthday to screen legend Bette Davis. Called "one of the major events of the 20th century," Bette was intelligent, opinionated, feisty but never boring. During her 60 year career, she was the first person to receive 10 Academy Award nominations, the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Insitute. She was also the co-founder with John Garfield of the Hollywood Canteen. In 1999, Bette was second after Katherine Hepburn on the American Film Institutes list of the greatest female stars of all time. Bette was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908 in Lowell, Massachussetts. Her parents split up when Bette was 7 and her sister Bobby was 6. For the next several years, the little family bounced around from New York City to New Jersey and back to Massachussetts as Ruth tried to make ends meet (Bette's father was not big on the child support payments...

Yesterday in 1204, Eleanor of Aquitaine passed away, so it's fitting that I'm reviewing Christy English's debut novel THE QUEEN'S PAWN, since Eleanor of Aquitaine is a major character. What it's about: At only nine, Princess Alais of France is sent to live in England until she is of age to wed Prince Richard, son of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alais is an innocent pawn on the chessboard of dynastic marriage, her betrothal intended to broker an uneasy truce between the nations. Estranged from her husband, Eleanor sees a kindred spirit in this determined young girl. She embraces Alais as a daughter, teaching the princess what it takes to be a woman of power in a world of men. But as Alais grows to maturity and develops ambitions of her own, Eleanor begins to see her as a threat-and their love for each other becomes overshadowed by their bitter rivalry, dark betrayals, conflicting passions, and a battle for revenge over the throne of England its...