Nina Auerbach brilliantly reveals the Ellen Terry whose roles, on stage and off, embodied everything that a rapidly changing world exhorted women to be.

"Auerbach writes beautifully. . . . In this biography of Ellen Terry, she evokes the story of every woman's life, in all its accepted roles. . . . England's most famous actress is here re-created, herself creating the life of woman. A glorious book." - Carolyn G. Heilbrun

"One of the finest examples I know of theatre biography as cultural history. . . . Auerbach's force of feeling . . . [makes us] understand Terry's career as the bowdlerized body of woman's expressive genius in the Victorian age. . . . A life-and-times classic that will become a model for other feminist work." - Jane Marcus, Women's Review of Books