Beth G. (BethG) - , reviewed A strong woman when it was not fashionable to be strong on 12/2/2008 + 108 more book reviews

Mary Robinson led an amazing life; she was wife, mother, actress, famous beauty, mistress, and writer and she excelled at all of them, with the possible exception of wife. (Give that she was pressured into marriage and her husband was a sniveling leech, she can be forgiven for that fault.) When she died she was considered one of the outstanding writers of England, yet today she is virtually forgotten.

I suspect that it would be hard to write a dull book about such an interesting life, but, thankfully, Ms Byrne is a skilled writer and gives us a lively and fascinating story.

I would like to dispute something from the description of this book. It says, "Never one to pass up an opportunity, she later used his (the Prince of Wales, later George IV) ardent and numerous love letters as blackmail." She did not blackmail the Prince. The Prince promised, in writing, that if she would quit the stage and become his mistress, he would support her for life. She merely held him to it, as much as she could. (He was constantly behind on payments, even when Robinson was worrying whether she would be able to pay for food.)

This is an excellent book.

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