Emily Franklin, author of The Lioness of Boston, in conversation with Henriette Lazaridis
When:
Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024 7:00p -
8:00p
Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024 7:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA 02140
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Art, Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/emily-franklin-author-lioness-boston-conversation-henriette-lazaridis
Porter Square Books is delighted to welcome Emily Franklin for the paperback release of The Lioness of Boston! Author Henriette Lazaridis will join Franklin in conversation. This event will take place on Tuesday, March 19 at 7pm at Porter Square Books (25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140).
RSVP here to let us know you're coming and to receive event updates!
"Brings Isabella Stewart Gardner fully, intimately alive--irrepressible and avid for life. In this richly compelling novel, Emily Franklin beautifully conjures this extraordinary woman and her world."--Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children
A deeply evocative portrayal of the life of the daring trailblazer for women everywhere. Isabella Stewart Gardner, vision not only created an inimitable legacy in American art but also transformed a city.
By the time Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her Italian palazzo-style home as a museum in 1903 to showcase her collection of old masters, antiques, and objects d'art, she was already well-known for scandalizing Boston's polite society. But when Isabella first arrived in Boston in 1861, she was twenty years old, newly married to a wealthy trader, and unsure of herself. Puzzled by the frosty reception she received from stuffy bluebloods, she strived to fit in. After two devastating tragedies and rejection from upper society, Isabella discovered her spirit and cast off expectations.
Freed by travel, Isabella explores the world of art, ideas, and letters, meeting such kindred spirits as Henry James and Oscar Wilde. From London and Paris to Egypt and Asia, she develops a keen eye for paintings and objects, and meets feminists ready to transform nineteenth century thinking in the twentieth century. Isabella becomes her own person, painted by John Singer Sargent in a portrait of daring d colletage, and fond of such stunts as walking a pair of lions in the Boston Public Garden. And finally becomes the first woman to open a museum in the United States.
The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman's life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms.
A lifelong visitor to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Emily Franklin is the author of more than twenty novels and a poetry collection, Tell Me How You Got Here. Her award-winning work has appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Guernica, JAMA, and numerous literary magazines as well as featured and read aloud on NPR and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She lives outside of Boston with her family including two dogs large enough to be lions.
Henriette Lazaridis is the author of Last Days in Plaka, forthcoming from Pegasus Books in April, 2024, and Terra Nova, which the New York Times called “ingenious” and is also available from Pegasus. Her debut novel The Clover House was a Boston Globe bestseller. She earned degrees in English literature from Middlebury College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Pennsylvania. Having taught English at Harvard, she now teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in northern Greece. She is the co-founder of Galiot Press.
