Infelicia and Other Writings

Book excerpt: Adah Isaacs Menken was the most highly paid and most scandalous stage performer of the 1860s. She is also one of the most fascinating and unconventional writers in American literary history, and the first to follow the revolution in poetry started by Whitman's Leaves of Grass. This edition presents, for the first time, a generous selection of Menken's uncollected poems and essays, along with the first edition of Infelicia (1868), her only book. Also included is a range of carefully selected appendices that help contextualize Menken's writings in terms of theater, Judaism, Bohemianism, women's rights, and women writers.