Review
Praise for A DANGEROUS WOMAN
“The Fosters’ skillful narrative biography of nineteenth-century superstar Adah Menken captures the richness and complexity of this Civil War-era Jezebel, an archetypal American bad girl.”
―Eve LaPlante, award-winning author of American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans
Praise for Adah Isaacs Menken
“A magnificent spectacle dazzled my vision―the whole constellation of the Great Menken came flaming out of the heavens.” ―Mark Twain
“Adah was the premier sight of the West, the Rockies a very poor second.” ―Life magazine
“This is she . . . the world’s delight.” ―Algernon Swinburne
“She is so lovely she numbs the mind and the senses reel.” ―New York Post
“The inspired Deborah of her people.” ―Baron Lionel de Rothschild
“Today’s Hollywood celebrities have nothing on the glamorous, scandalous, tragic and paradoxical Adah Isaacs Menken.” ― American Jewish Historical Society
“Adah Menken was the most remarkable mingling of angel and devil.” ― Napoleon Sarony, the first celebrity photographer
“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. She eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle on Irene Sadler, his character based on Menken
From the Inside Flap
Marilyn Monroe might never have become the legend she did without America s original tragic star: actress and poet Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 68). In a century remembered for Victorian restraint, Menken s modern flair for action, scandal, and unpopular causes especially that of the Jewish people revolutionized show business. On stage she was the first actress to apparently bare all. Off stage she originated the front-page scandal and became the world s most famous, highly paid actress the darling of New York City, San Francisco, London, and Paris. At thirty-three this femme fatale mysteriously died. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, at her bedside, composed a farewell poem.
A Dangerous Woman is the first book to tell the entire fascinating story of Menken. Born in New Orleans to a woman of color and to a father whose identity is debated, Menken became a true daughter of Texas in her teens, learning to shoot and ride. Eventually she moved to the Midwest, where she became an outspoken protégé of the rabbi who founded Reform Judaism. Adah wrote heartfelt verse and essays in defense of the Jewish people. Later, in New York, she became Walt Whitman s ally and a revolutionary figure in her own right. During the Civil War she was arrested as a Confederate agent and became America s first pin-up superstar.
Menken married and left five husbands. She could sing and dance, and she was a wonderful comic. She was fond of gambling the night away dressed in men s evening clothes. She rode horses astride, took and discarded lovers, and wore revealing sheath dresses in an age of hoop skirts. Ultimately, this naughtiest of Victorians who fought racial, religious, and gender oppression in her own time, and today represents sexual liberation for men and women alike paid dearly for success.|Marilyn Monroe might never have become the legend she did without America’s original tragic star: actress and poet Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–68). In a century remembered for Victorian restraint, Menken’s modern flair for action, scandal, and unpopular causes—especially that of the Jewish people—revolutionized show business. On stage she was the first actress to apparently bare all. Off stage she originated the front-page scandal and became the world’s most famous, highly paid actress—the darling of New York City, San Francisco, London, and Paris. At thirty-three this femme fatale mysteriously died. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, at her bedside, composed a farewell poem.
A Dangerous Woman is the first book to tell the entire fascinating story of Menken. Born in New Orleans to a “woman of color” and to a father whose identity is debated, Menken became a true daughter of Texas in her teens, learning to shoot and ride. Eventually she moved to the Midwest, where she became an outspoken protégé of the rabbi who founded Reform Judaism. Adah wrote heartfelt verse and essays in defense of the Jewish people. Later, in New York, she became Walt Whitman’s ally and a revolutionary figure in her own right. During the Civil War she was arrested as a Confederate agent—and became America’s first pin-up superstar.
Menken married and left five husbands. She could sing and dance, and she was a wonderful comic. She was fond of gambling the night away dressed in men’s evening clothes. She rode horses astride, took and discarded lovers, and wore revealing sheath dresses in an age of hoop skirts. Ultimately, this naughtiest of Victorians—who fought racial, religious, and gender oppression in her own time, and today represents sexual liberation for men and women alike—paid dearly for success.
From the Back Cover
She was as American as ambition, as human as sex, as transcendent as love. America’s first international superstar, actress and poet Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–68) was a woman whose life crossed paths with the most famous men and women of the Victorian Age. The first in the line of Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, and Marilyn Monroe, she scandalized audiences in New York, San Francisco, London, and Paris with her provocative performances; entertained a country ripped apart by Civil War; and influenced the lives of Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens,
Alexandre Dumas, Sarah Bernhardt, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
About the Author
Michael Foster, novelist, biographer, and historian, graduated from Cornell with honors in philosophy. He received an MFA from the Writer’s Workshop, Iowa, attended Harvard Law School, and did extensive graduate study and taught at NYU. His first novel, Freedom's Thunder (Avon, 1980), was praised by Nobel laureate Isaac B. Singer. His writing style has been described by Entertainment Weekly as “racy and engaging.” Michael is producer and writer of a DVD shot in New York’s Chinatown: Asian Health Secrets. Barbara Foster, Assoc. Prof. at CUNY, specializing in Women's Studies, has co-authored three trade books. She has published many articles on education and travel and 200 poems in journals in various countries. Barbara is a referee for the Royal Geographical Society. She lectures often in the U.S. and abroad and has packed auditoriums from Washington’s Smithsonian to Cal Tech, Sidney, Buenos Aires, and Prague. She recently gave seminars at Skidmore and Trinity colleges. She has been selected as a Speaker (on Menken) by the NY State Council on the Humanities. Barbara appears on TV, radio, and in print/Net interviews. Joint publications of the Fosters also include Forbidden Journey (Harper, '89), a classic of adventure travel; Three In Love (Harper, '97), the history of the romantic triangle. Praised by Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, and Bookwoman, Three In Love has been published in German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Turkish. They have given over 100 slide talks worldwide, including highly applauded slide talks on Adah Menken at Yale Drama School, libraries and synagogues. They plan an extensive tour of the Menken show, with its spectacular photos. The Fosters have sold previous movie options and treatments to Columbia Pictures and directors Carroll Ballard and Brian Gibson, and they remain involved in bringing their biographies to the big screen.
