Ellen Terry, player in her time

She was one of the most beloved figures of her time and, after Queen Victoria, the highest-paid working woman in the realm. A boyish child actress in the 1850s, she subdued her energy until her eerie beauty made her the center of an aesthetic cult in the 1870s and '80s. In the 1890s she radiated a queenly benevolence as reigning female star of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre; later, as the new century veered out of control, she would exude maternal comfort to men like J.M. Barrie and George Bernard Shaw, while becoming an austere oracle to a circle of militant new women led by her daughter, Edy Craig. She held a place in the pantheon of great actresses alongside Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. She was Ellen Terry, consummate player. Nina Auerbach brilliantly reveals the Ellen Terry whose roles, on stage and off, embodied everything that a rapidly changing world exhorted women to be.