A regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, she lives in Warwickshire with her two young children and her husband, the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate.Perdita is her first book to be published in the U.S. This authoritative and engaging book presents a fascinating portrait of a woman who was variously darling of the London stage, a poet whose work was admired by Coleridge and a mistress to the most powerful men in England, and yet whose fortunes were nevertheless precarious, always on the brink of being squandered through recklessness, excess and passion. from the University of Liverpool, where she is a research fellow in English literature. She later used his copious love letters for blackmail. On her release, Mary quickly became one of the most popular actresses of the day, famously playing Perdita in 'The Winter's Tale' for a rapt audience that included the Prince of Wales, who fell madly in love with her. After being struck down by paralysis, apparently following a miscarriage, she remade herself yet again, this time as a popular writer who was also admired by the leading intellectuals of the day. His dissipated lifestyle landed the couple and their baby in debtors' prison, where Mary wrote her first book of poetry and met lifelong friend Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire. After being raised by a middle-class father, Mary was married, at age fourteen, to Thomas Robinson. One of the most flamboyant women of the late-eighteenth century, Mary Robinson's life was marked by reversals of fortune.
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