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...