This book documents the life and career of Marie Prescott (1850-93), an actress of great beauty and wit, who directed and starred in Oscar Wilde's first play, Vera, or the Nihilists. Like Wilde, Prescott struggled to reconcile her artistic aspirations with her financial goals and to assert her independence from the social restraints of her day; she also had a complicated love life. Her compelling story is marked by the sensational elements of opening nights, vengeful critics, bitter feuds, insanity, missing persons, lawsuits, divorces, and sexual obsession. In all of this, Marie Prescott remained a figure of impressive intellect and will. Her lively correspondence with Wilde, her erudite lectures, and the dramatic transcripts of a libel trial in which she was involved recorded her singular voice and forceful intelligence. Her story is tied not only to Wilde, but also to many of the major New York theatrical figures of her time, as well as to the social, journalistic, and political worlds of New York and Kentucky. Her ancestors were influential in the organization of the American Constitution and the founding of the state of Texas.
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