Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Two Remarkable Families
Deemed “a prodigy among biographers” by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater.\ Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she...
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Deemed “a prodigy among biographers” by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater.Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voicedmerchant’s clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic presence. He would become one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Terry and Irving created a powerhouse of the arts in London’s Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker—who would go on to write Dracula—as manager. Celebrities whose scandalous private lives commanded global attention, they took America by stormin wildly popular national tours.Their all-consuming professional lives left little room for their brilliant but troubled children. Henry’s boys followed their father into the theater but could not escape the shadow of his fame. Ellen’s feminist daughter, Edy, founded an avant-garde theater and a largely lesbian community at her mother’s country home. But it was Edy’s son, the revolutionary theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig, who possessed the most remarkable gifts and the most perplexing inability to realize them. A now forgotten modernist visionary, he collaborated with the Russian director Stanislavski on a production of Hamlet that forever changed the way theater was staged. Maddeningly self-absorbed, he inherited his mother’s potent charm and fathered thirteen children by eight women, including a daughter with the dancer Isadora Duncan.An epic story spanning a century of cultural change, A Strange Eventful History finds space for the intimate moments of daily existence as well as the bewitching fantasies played out by its subjects. Bursting with charismatic life, it is an incisive portrait of two families who defied the strictures of their time. It will be swiftly recognized as a classic. The Washington Post - Michael Dirda In this group biography of Terry, Irving and their families, Michael Holroyd…has produced the most completely delicious, the most civilized and the most wickedly entertaining work of nonfiction anyone could ask for. I have no particular interest in theatrical history, but Holroyd's verve—his dramatic sense for the comic and the tragic—is irresistible. The book's chapters are pleasingly short, its prose crisp and fast-moving, and every page is packed with bizarre doings, eccentric characters, surprising factoids and a stream of lively and scandalous anecdotes.
\ Charles McGrathThere have been several excellent books about Irving and Terry individually, including Terry's own charming, if highly unreliable, memoir, The Story of My Life. What Holroyd adds to the picture is an extended dual focus, as well as lively and entertaining writing—among contemporary biographers he is almost without peer as a stylist—and an unparalleled knowledge of the period.\ —The New York Times\ \ \ \ \ Michael DirdaIn this group biography of Terry, Irving and their families, Michael Holroyd…has produced the most completely delicious, the most civilized and the most wickedly entertaining work of nonfiction anyone could ask for. I have no particular interest in theatrical history, but Holroyd's verve—his dramatic sense for the comic and the tragic—is irresistible. The book's chapters are pleasingly short, its prose crisp and fast-moving, and every page is packed with bizarre doings, eccentric characters, surprising factoids and a stream of lively and scandalous anecdotes.\ —The Washington Post\ \ \ Publishers WeeklyHolroyd's latest starts as a biography of Ellen Terry, one of the greatest actresses of the late 19th century-until it reaches the beginning of her professional and personal involvement with the even more legendary Henry Irving. The story circles back to recap Irving's life, then moves forward with their collaborations on Shakespeare plays and "blood-and-thunder melodramas" at London's Lyceum Theater as well as road shows in England and America. Holroyd also delves into the lives of their children (from separate relationships), and it's Ellen's offspring, Edy and Gordon Craig, who dominate the second half of this hefty family history: Edy took up with a longtime companion who originally had a lesbian crush on Ellen and would later become involved with Vita Sackville-West; Gordon was a visionary set designer who treated the women in his life-including Isadora Duncan-abominably. There's even a place in the saga for George Bernard Shaw (the subject of Holroyd's three-volume biography), who conducted a passionate correspondence with Terry for years before they ever met. Holroyd does a masterful job of keeping all the narrative lines flowing smoothly, ensnaring readers in a powerful backstage drama rivaling any modern celebrity exploits. (Mar.)\ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalLiterary biographer Holroyd (Bernard Shaw; Augustus John; Lytton Strachey) admirably interweaves the histories, from the Victorian stage to modern theater, of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving and their families. In this engaging social history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Holroyd writes informatively of the theatrical world, highlighting not only the glamour of Irving's and Terry's careers but also the toll the hard work and disappointments of their calling had on their personal lives. He speculates, offering substantiating detail, on the relationship between Irving and Terry, who spent as much time together offstage as they did on. Terry's son Edward Gordon Craig's life as an influential stage designer leads the biographer on a merry chase through his relationships with eight women and his 13 children. His sister Edith Craig's life as a suffragette, her lesbian entourage, and her contributions to the theater have not been well documented, a shortcoming Holroyd corrects. Irving's sons, Laurence and Harry, relatively minor characters in this narrative, followed in their father's footsteps but didn't reach his level of success or inherit his daring, charisma, and creativity. This well-indexed book is highly recommended for all academic libraries and all libraries with theater collections.\ —Susan L. Peters\ \ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsBiographer and memoirist Holroyd (Mosaic, 2004, etc.) re-creates the separate and shared histories of two theater immortals..The author begins with a fetching chronicle of actress Ellen Terry's interrupted rise to fame among an itinerant family of actors in Victorian England, following the path trod by her immensely popular older sister Kate. Freed from an older husband, never quite compromised by an effervescent, affectionate nature that kept her on the threshold of scandal, Terry eventually formed a celebrated alliance with actor-manager Henry Irving, whose story then occupies center stage until the spotlight widens to their common history and eventually the stories of their gifted, troubled offspring. The pair that began it all were a study in contrasts. Terry was the enchanting, intuitively gifted beauty, Irving the scrupulously disciplined arch-professional. She was Ophelia to his Hamlet, his partner in the great success they enjoyed at London's Lyceum Theatre and during a spectacularly popular American tour. Their respective children followed them into artistic circles. Henry's two sons achieved reasonable success as actors, though nothing like their father's renown. Terry's daughter Edy Craig lived on the outskirts of England's emerging lesbian culture. Her handsome brother Gordon Craig, an infamously waspish actor turned stage designer, virtually invented abstract scene design, when not fathering babies with an alarming number of smitten women. The acting gene re-emerged with brilliance in Terry's great-nephew John Gielgud, whom Holroyd depicts as an incisive critic and superlative thespian. In addition to his replete portrayals of Terry and Irving, Holroyd offers a plethora ofanecdotal and analytical information about acting technique and theater lore. Readers will relish such tidbits as the fact that Irving's embattled business manager was Bram Stoker..A crowded, thoroughly captivating canvas of cultural history.\ \
