Book description
Mrs Jordan's Profession is the acclaimed biography of Dora
Jordan by bestselling author Claire Tomalin
'Intelligent, finely made and wonderfully readable. As gripping as
the best fiction' Independent on Sunday
Acclaimed as the greatest comic actress of her day, Dora Jordan
lived a quite different role off-stage as lover to Prince William,
third son of George III. Unmarried, the pair lived in a villa on the
Thames and had ten children together until William, under pressure
from royal advisers, abandoned her. The story of how Dora moved
between the worlds of the eighteenth-century theatre and happy
domesticity, of her fights for her family and her career makes a
classic story of royal perfidy and female courage.
From the acclaimed author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self,
Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, this
celebrated biography is one of history's most astonishing untold stories.
'The strangest and most sensational story Tomalin has told so far. A
miraculously detailed portrait - as brisk, unsentimental,
good-humoured and fairminded as its subject' Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph
'Compelling, shrewd in its judgements, exceptionally well written,
and informed by a vivid sense of the past' John Gross, Sunday Telegraph
'Fascinating, affecting. A compelling story and Tomalin tells it
with clarity and warmth' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times
Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed
biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary
Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine
Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly
Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A
Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn
Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former
literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday
Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.
Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933. She has worked in
publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first
of the
New Statesman
and then of the
Sunday Times
, which she left in 1986. She is the author of, among other books:
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
;
Shelley and His World
Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life
;
The Invisible Woman
and the extraordinarily successful biography of Samuel Pepys. Other
books written for Penguin are:
Jane Austen: A Life
and a collection of memoirs entitled
Several Strangers
.
