Christine Balint
Ophelia's Fan
A Novel
Irish actress Harriet Smithson, inspiration for Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, is also the muse for this mesmerizing novel.
Christine Balint reimagines the bittersweet life of Harriet Smithson, the tragedienne who brought Shakespeare to the French. Born in County Clare, Ireland, in 1800, Harriet is left in the care of the elderly priest Father Barrett, and is brought up on Lamb's Shakespeare, lime-sherbet sweets, and prayer. A child of traveling players, her ultimate inheritance is Covent Garden, London, the green room, and the theater's rough magic.
With the arrival of Charles Kemble's English Theatre troupe in Paris in 1827, the Odéon Theatre is awash with the drama and music of Shakespeare. Harriet is Ophelia. The French Romantics swoon, traffic stops, and the high-society women plait straw in their hair in honor of her mad Ophelia. The fiery composer Hector Berlioz falls in love.
In Ophelia's Fan, Balint re-creates the texture and breadth of the nineteenth century and brings alive Harriet Smithson—the actress and the woman, her roles and her loves.
"A fascinating look at the theatre world of London and Paris in the early 19th century, and of one of its stars, Harriet Smithson. Ophelia's Fan is original and daring, telling the story of Berlioz's muse with passion, sensitivity, and grace. Enchanting."—Helen Humphreys, author of The Lost Garden
Christine Balint is the author of the highly praised The Salt Letters. Born in 1975 in Melbourne, Australia, she is working on her Ph.D. there.
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Also Available:
The Salt Letters
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