SOURCE: Brooks, Colette. “Behind the Scenes.” New Republic 212, no. 26 (26 June 1995): 38-40.

In the following review of Mrs. Jordan's Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King, Brooks finds shortcomings in Tomalin's conception of fate and her portrayal of Dora Jordan as a victim.

At midpoint in her account of an ill-starred eighteenth-century love affair, after the general outline of a ruinous end has been rendered and we await presentation of the particulars, Claire Tomalin offers a summary judgment of her subject's fate: “We can see, with hindsight, that it would have been better if she had never met him.” The remark has a curiously modern ring; it can serve as the epitaph for many a contemporary misalliance. Though Tomalin's lovers constitute a rather narrowly drawn demographic group—she was the most celebrated English actress of her day, he was a ne'er-do-well who became, quite unexpectedly...