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Sheridans Nightingale: The Story of Elizabeth Linley
On a wild night in March 1772, s small vessel put out to sea from Kent heading for Dunkirk. Aboard was eighteen-year-old Eliza Linley, the finest soprano in England. She was fleeing from a rich, elderly but unwanted admirer. Guarding her was the young Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a feckless adventurer, desperately in love but too diffident to admit it. Their destination was a convent where Eliza would be safe. They did not reach it. Instead they embarked upon one of the most discussed marriages of the eighteenth century.
322 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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January 31, 2019I know nothing of the author but suspect that he is a novelist at heart. Chapters begin with vivid opening scenes, often depicted the inner thoughts of the principals, without any corroborating evidence.
This is a biography for the reader who likes a blend of fictional scene setting with briskly paced storytelling dwelling on the dramatic highlights of a life and milking them for all they are worth. Chedzoy's Elizabeth Linley is a poor honey, drooping wistfully over her difficult marriage to the shallow playboy Richard Sheridan, until at last, beaten by TB and near death she finds her true love, Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
Um, yeah.
The best part of the book was the delving into the talented Linleys' lives, and how their dad exploited them as money makers, much as Mozart's dad did. (In fact, according to this biography. the extremely talented Thomas Linley met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart while they were teens, in Italy, where the boys spent a couple of blissful days making music together before they parted forever.)
There is far too much extrapolating inner lives in a sort of realityTV manner from scarce evidence for this to be a keeper. I would have liked fewer of those, more footnotes, and a whole lot more pictures. But it was an okay read.
This is a biography for the reader who likes a blend of fictional scene setting with briskly paced storytelling dwelling on the dramatic highlights of a life and milking them for all they are worth. Chedzoy's Elizabeth Linley is a poor honey, drooping wistfully over her difficult marriage to the shallow playboy Richard Sheridan, until at last, beaten by TB and near death she finds her true love, Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
Um, yeah.
The best part of the book was the delving into the talented Linleys' lives, and how their dad exploited them as money makers, much as Mozart's dad did. (In fact, according to this biography. the extremely talented Thomas Linley met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart while they were teens, in Italy, where the boys spent a couple of blissful days making music together before they parted forever.)
There is far too much extrapolating inner lives in a sort of realityTV manner from scarce evidence for this to be a keeper. I would have liked fewer of those, more footnotes, and a whole lot more pictures. But it was an okay read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review