SOURCE: Rodgers, Pat. “The Adorable Dorothy.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4777 (21 October 1994): 4-5.

In the following review, Rodgers evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Mrs. Jordan's Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King.

Claire Tomalin has made her name principally as the chronicler of the insulted and the injured. Her representative women began with Mary Wollstonecraft, wilfully misunderstood before and after her premature death. Then came the secret life of Katherine Mansfield, and more recently the uncovering of the invisible woman, Ellen Ternan. But now Tomalin has shifted her gaze to Dorothy Jordan [in Mrs. Jordan's Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King], and the slightly banal-looking subtitle indicates the nature of the change. As an actress and royal mistress, Dorothy must have wished at times that her life was more of a secret and that she could have found the...