Famous Hussies of History: Stories of the Super-Women [Paperback]

Albert Payson Terhune (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2005

Behind some great men there's more than just a great woman. Sometimes, there's other great women, women of questionable virtue, and women the great man simply can't take his mind off of. These other women are the parts of history written off as inconsequential -- despite sometimes having the greatest impact. Men fold before these women's desires, change their lives, change their nations, alter the course of history. All because of a woman's influence. These "Super-Women" were Albert Payson Terhune's subject for a series of articles in Ainslee's Magazine around the year 1916. Each article focused on a single woman, whose life irreversibly molded the world we live in. Shortly after the seralized version appeared in the magazine, select stories were collected in different versions of the book reprinted here.

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Gracie Passette Productions (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977100308
• ISBN-13: 978-0977100309
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,825,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Delightful Even After All These Years!, May 28, 2011

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Famous Hussies of History: Stories of the Super-Women (Paperback)

This particular book has held some fascination for me over the years. First, it is written by Albert Payson Terhune, one of the finest authors of dog stories (Collies being his specialty) to every set pen to paper. I was raised reading collections of his stories and collect his books to this day. Secondly, I like older books; the older the better. The edition I am reviewing was the published in 1943. It is a first edition. It is printed on wartime paper which has turned yellow and is now starting to crack. Third, I love reading about women as I am quite fond of them...always have been. They are fascinating creatures!

Anyway, this is a collection of pieces; articles if you will, which first saw the light of day around 1916 in several different magazines of which Ainslee's Magizine is the primary source. (By the way, good pristine copies of this once extremely popular magazine are getting a bit hard to come by of late...pity.) Each chapter, of which there are twelve, investigates the life of various women who were famous or infamous, depending on how you look at it, in their day and time. They were considered, as the title of this book indicates, "Hussies." The women included here are:

Lola Montez
Ninon De L'Enclos
Peg Woffington
Helen of Troy
Madame Jumel
Adrienne Lecouvreur
Cleopatra
George Sand
Madame Du Barry
Lady Blessington
Madame Recamier
and
Lady Hamilton

Terhune could certainly bring a tear to the eye when writing about his beloved collies but I did not realize until I read this work that the author was also able to bring a smile to your lips. His very clever use of euphemisms is an absolute delight. As another reviewer has pointed out...this guy could turn a phrase! He can be quite funny is a sardonic sort of way.

The modern reader will find that the underlying sexual content of this work is very mild when compared to what is offered up today, but make no mistake, there is a strong underlying current of sexual misbehavior running throughout; you just have to be alert and judicial in your reading.

There are a couple of things to note about these short biographies. First, the reader must remember when they were written. The author uses many of what we would consider archaic words for today, but they were in common use when this material was written. If you are not familiar with the writing of this period, you will find yourself scrambling for the dictionary quite a lot. The same hold true for style and syntax. I personally find this delightful and is one of the primary reason I read such work.

Secondly, even an individual such as myself who is not a professional historian will question the author's scholarship from time to time. There is no reference to source documents here what so ever. The reader will find much hearsay and gossipy sort of facts stuck here and there. Remember, these stories were written for general popular consumption...to inform, yes, but more for amusement and titillation than anything else.
Along those same lines, you will find that not every word in this book is politically correct. Like many authors of his time, and people in general, he was extremely class conscious. I loved his paragraph describing the beheading of Madame Du Barry:

"Marie was sentenced to death, on December 7, 1793, and was beheaded the same day. Almost alone of all the Frenchwomen thus put to death, she turned coward at the last. The strain of peasant blood came to the fore. And where aristocrats rode smiling to the scaffold, Marie du Barry behaved like a panic-stricken child. She fell on her knees and begged for her life. She told where every article of value she possessed was buried, in her garden......They heard her on the steps of the scaffold, lost and desperate, mad with anguish and terror, struggling, imploring, begging for mercy, crying, Help! Help! like a woman being assassinated by robbers."

Well go figure...like I myself would not be throwing a hissy fit under such circumstances!

It is interesting to note that Terhune was an extremely popular author in his day, but like a contemporary, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Think Tarzan and John Carter of Mars), both men spent there lives wondering why on earth people would want to read or be interested in what they wrote...much less pay good money for it.

Hey, this is a good book; a fun read...give it a shot.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history or more accurately HERstory, January 13, 2009

By 

C. Joyce (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Famous Hussies of History: Stories of the Super-Women (Paperback)

Who knew there were such goings on....going on so long ago. Not I.
Albert Payson Terhune who most people seem to know from his many collie stories is quite the witty writer. I often paused in this book to admire the turn of a phrase and his judicious use of euphemisms.