From humble beginnings with the threat of the workhouse looming, Emily Soldene rose to become a star of the London stage and a formidable impresario with her own opera company. The darling of theatreland, she later reinvented herself as a journalist and writer who scandalised the country with her outrageous memoir.

Weaving through the grit and glamour of Victorian music halls and theatres, taking encounters with the Pre-Raphaelites and Charles Dickens in her stride, Emily became the toast of New York and ventured far off the beaten track to tour Australia and New Zealand.

Batten paints a vibrant portrait of an almost forgotten star who trod the boards, travelled the globe and tore up the Victorian rule book.

Emily Soldene was a courageous actor-manager, creating one of one of the era's most celebrated theatre companies, whose journey takes her to theatres across America and Australia as well as throughout Great Britain. Meticulously researched to provide a vivid evocation of 19th century London and how an uneducated child of a bonnet-making single mother from Clerkenwell could triumph in London's theatreland. The biography of an almost forgotten star of the Victorian stage, brought back to life by bestselling (Sisters of the East End) author and BBC tv producer Helen Batten