Wild Romance

December 15, 2009
A journalist pursues an abandoned Victorian wife who turned her plight into a surprising career as a writer and world traveler.

Schama stumbled on the scandalous story of Theresa Longworth Yelverton and her bigamist husband in a footnote about the origins of the Wilkie Collins novel Man and Wife. The several trials in Dublin and Edinburgh during the 1860s, which attempted to ascertain whether William Charles Yelverton had actually married Theresa or not before he married someone else, created enormous publicity at the time and challenged disparate laws governing marriage, especially between people of different faiths (she was Catholic, he was not). The two met on a steamer headed to Dover in 1852. Theresa was a 17-year-old convent-educated daughter of a Manchester silk manufacturer, and William was a 28-year-old Irish aristocrat in the Royal Artillery. After meeting, she boldly wrote to him a slew of fulsome correspondence that would later be used in the trials to discredit her. Schama chronicles their two marriage ceremonies, one informally performed in Scotland, the other in an Irish church, but neither had witnesses because Yelverton's family would not abide marrying a Catholic and he possessed a"labyrinth" of inheritance difficulties. Shortly thereafter, William married another woman, and Theresa appealed to the public prosecutor in Edinburgh. Throughout the various trials and appeals, Theresa became a public advocate of marriage-law reforms. She was portrayed as young woman corrupted by her French education and by novels, immodest and unfeminine in her bold assertions that women could enjoy productive pursuits. Restless and constantly seeking, she later wrote novels and autobiographical accounts of her travels to America, Southeast Asia and South Africa, among others. She was, writes Schama,"perhaps the first woman to turn unwanted celebrity into a journalistic advantage."

A compelling footnote that could ignite interest in Yelverton's work.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2010
Freelance journalist Schama, daughter of esteemed historian Simon Schama, undertakes a nonfiction debut most writers only dream about. She stumbled upon a page-turning topic in a footnote to an article on Wilkie Collins's "Man and Wife", a novel based on a real-life episode. Her retelling of the history of one of Victorian England's most notorious scandals reads like a novel itself (the more so because she does not provide endnotes or a bibliography), detailing every aspect of the bigamy trial of William Charles Yelverton, which dominated the front pages of Irish, Scottish, and British newspapers in 1861. Although the story of Yelverton and his first wife, Theresa Longworth, practically tells itself through court documents, letters, and public opinion, Schama adds a journalist's touch in her story development. The latter part of the book deals with Theresa's later life in America as a self-made woman still haunted by her past. VERDICT History buffs and those who enjoy a good, old-fashioned scandal will find charm here, but it will not be as useful to serious students or specialists.Suzan Alteri, Wayne State Univ. Lib., Detroit

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2010
Contemporary women raised in semi-feminist-friendly Western cultures owe a large debt of gratitude to a host of nameless women who struggled mightily to effect social change during the rigid Victorian era. Schama has plucked one of these basically anonymous females from the scrap heap of history, breathing new life into the story of one womans dogged determination to salvage her tattered reputation and forge an independent life for herself in the aftermath of a publicly debated scandal and a failed marriage. Although Theresa Longworth, a typical nineteenth-century Englishwoman who craved a home and a husband more than anything else, was on the surface an unlikely feminist heroine, circumstances forced her to take a very public stand when her neer-do-well husband abandoned her and denied their legal union. Waging her battle through the court systems of England, Ireland, and Scotland, she eventually prevailed, but her hard-won victory cost her the chance of ever experiencing a socially acceptable life as a wife and a mother. Instead, she traveled the globe chronicling her adventures and carving out a career for herself as a noted travel writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)