From the very beginning, she was a radical. At age nineteen, Charlotte Cushman, America’s beloved actress and the country’s first true celebrity, left her life―and countless suitors―behind to make it as a Shakespearean actress. After revolutionizing the role of Lady Macbeth in front of many adoring fans, she went on the road, performing in cities across a dividing America and building her fame. She was everywhere. And yet, her name has faded in the shadows of history. Now, for the first time in decades, Cushman’s story comes to full and brilliant life in this definitive, exhilarating, and enlightening biography of the 19th-century icon. With rarely seen letters, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of New York City in the 1800s, featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries that changed the cultural landscape.A vivid portrait of an astonishing and unique life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable women, and restores her to the centre stage where she belongs.
عن المؤلف
Tana Wojczuk is a contributing editor at Guernica and teaches writing at New York University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Believer, Bomb, Narrative, Vice, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize judged by David Shields, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation fellow, Tin House Summer Writers Workshop poetry fellow, and research fellow in the New York University Global Scholars program. She received her MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. A Boulder native, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her first book, Lady Romeo: The Radical, Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity was a finalist for the Marfield Prize National Award for Arts Writing, Publishing Triangle award, and a LAMBDA Literary Award.