LOVELY LADIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 13

LOVELY LADIES

TEN FASCINATING WOMEN, by Elizabeth Jenkins; Odhams Press, through Whitcombe and Tombs, English price 15/-. ELIZABETH JENKINS’S title is no misnomer-her ten subjects will be almost as fascinating to the reader as they seem to have been to their contemporaries, The range is wide, stretching in time from Henry II's Fair Rosamond to the 18th century Lady Blessington, and in rank from Queen Elizabeth I to Harriet Wilson. But most of the

material comes from the rich mine of the early 18th century demi-monde, This is history at the personal level. In each of her biographical studies the author manages to use the verdict of history as a coloured medium through which the subject may to advantage be viewed. She has no reformist’s urge to whitewash established reputations; readers will not be left unsupported through having their preconceived ideas prised from under them; her new material (and there is an exciting amount of it) has been used to fill in existing outlines rather than to re-draw them. I should judge Elizabeth Jenkins a sound historian, but a romantic one. Most of her studies are illustrated by contemporary portraits of her subjects, which she tends to glance at fondly whenever facts become uglier than art. This makes for less distressing reading, though I myself would be inclined to put less weight upon the evidence of the portraits, remembering that they were executed by men at a time when their sitters’ charms were most potent. |

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