Bright Particular Star:
The Life & Times of Charlotte Cushman
by Joseph Leach

Where to find this book Bright Particular Star was published by Yale University Press in 1970. It is now out of print. For used copies try Alibris.

  blurb    online book    illustrations

The author
Joseph Leach is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is author of a variety of biographies and histories, including the well known The Typical Texan: Biography of an American Myth (SMU Press, 1952). He has recently completed a photographic history of the Camino Real, the 500-year-old Spanish Royal Highway that long joined Vera Cruz in the south with the distant Santa Fe in the north.

A feminist ahead of her time
Charlotte Cushman added strength to the ever-growing current of support for the rights of women in the 1800s. In remarks delivered to the Newport Historical Society in 1997, Joseph Leach described the support Charlotte Cushman gave to many talented female artists of her age, including sculptors Emma Stebbins, Harriet Hosmer, and the half-black half-Chippewa Edmonia Lewis. See Excerpts from an address to the Newport Historical Society.

Portraits, photographs, and articles
The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution is home to an 1853 oil portrait of Charlotte Cushman by William Page.
   A renowned public figure in her day, Charlotte Cushman was captured in several early photographs by the famed Mathew Brady. The Houghton Library at Harvard is home to an 1857 photographic print of Charlotte Cushman featured in a Smithsonian online display.

People from the book
Sculptor Emma Stebbins was Charlotte Cushman's longtime friend and companion. One of her sculptures, Angel of the Waters, adorns Bethesda Fountain in New York's Central Park.
   A Smithsonian online exhibit features photographs, paintings, and text describing Charlotte's acting partner and sometime rival Edwin Forrest; her friend, actor Edwin Booth (brother to John Wilkes); and her protegée, sculptor Harriet Hosmer.
   Harriet Hosmer was an independent and unconventional woman sculptor befriended by Charlotte Cushman. While living in Rome, Charlotte gave her much encouragement and helped market her works. Her life is artfully described in a biography by Dolly Sherwood.
Go to Amazon for: Harriet Hosmer, American Sculptor, 1830-1908, by Dolly Sherwood (University of Missouri Press, 1991).
   Edmonia Lewis, an African-American and Chippewa sculptor championed by Charlotte Cushman, is featured in a PBS NewsHour piece hosted by Charlayne Hunter-Gault.