<\/p>
Emily Soldene started her improbably varied career in the music halls, where she became a leading lady, producer, director and impresario. She circled the globe many times, conquering Broadway, touring the\u00a0Wild West<\/a> and sailing to Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n But it was her final reinvention \u2013 as a writer \u2013 that is perhaps her most heroic. When the theatrical world turned its back on her, Soldene kick-started her career once more, publishing two books and becoming a successful journalist. She had that rare thing for a Victorian working-class woman: a public voice, which she used to speak fearlessly about issues such as adultery and abortion. Though she despised the suffragette movement<\/a>, she was the living embodiment of a practical feminism that would seem remarkable even decades later.<\/p>\n It was sheer envy that first propelled Soldene onto the stage. Born in 1838 to a bonnet maker in Clerkenwell, London, by her early twenties she found herself married with two young children, living in her mother\u2019s cramped lodgings and with the threat of the workhouse always looming.<\/p>\n