Book Description

The life of actress Charlotte Charke transports us through the splendors and scandals of eighteenth-century London and its wicked theatrical world. Her father was one of the century's great actor/playwrights, a favorite of the king. It was thought that his high-spirited, often rebellious daughter Charlotte would follow in his footsteps at the legendary Drury Lane--but this was not to be. She had the troublesome habit of dressing in men's clothes--a preference first revealed onstage but adopted elsewhere after her disastrous marriage to an actor, who became the last man she ever loved. Author Shevelow, an expert on eighteenth-century London, re-creates Charlotte's downfall from the heights of London's theatrical world to its lascivious lows (the domain of fire-eaters, puppeteers, wastrels, gender-bending cross-dressers, wenches, and scandalous sorts of every variety) and her comeback as the author of one of the first autobiographies ever written by a woman.--From publisher description.