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Adah Isaacs Menken (June 15, 1835 – August 10, 1868), was an American actress, painter and poet, the highest earning actress of her time.〔(Pamela Lynn Palmer, "Adah Isaacs Menken" ), ''Handbook of Texas Online,'' published by the Texas State Historical Association, accessed 10 August 2012〕 She was best known for her performance in the melodrama ''Mazeppa'', with a climax that featured her apparently nude and riding a horse on stage. After great success for a few years with the play in New York and San Francisco, she appeared in a production in London and Paris, from 1864-66. After a brief trip back to the United States, she returned to Europe. She became ill within two years and died in Paris at age 33. As Menken told so many versions of her origins, including name, place of birth, ancestry, and religion, historians have differed in their accounts. Most have said she was born a Louisiana Creole Catholic of mixed race, with European and African ancestry. A celebrity who created sensational performances in the United States and Europe, she married several times and was also known for her affairs. She had two sons, both of whom died in infancy. Better known as an actress, Menken wanted to be known as a writer. She published about 20 essays, 100 poems, and a book of her collected poems, from 1855–1868 (the book was published posthumously). Early work was devoted to family; after her marriage her poetry and essays featured Jewish themes but, beginning with work published after moving to New York, with which she changed her style, Menken expressed a wide range of emotions and ideas about women's place in the world. Her collection ''Infelicia'' went through several editions and was in print until 1902. ==Early life and education== Accounts of Menken's early life and origins vary considerably. In her autobiographical "Some Notes of Her Life in Her Own Hand," published in the ''New York Times'' in 1868, Menken said she was born Marie Rachel Adelaide de Vere Spenser in Bordeaux, France and lived in Cuba as a child before her family settled in New Orleans. Elsewhere, in 1865 she wrote that her birth name was Dolores Adios Los Fiertes, and that she was the daughter of a French woman from New Orleans and a Jewish man from Spain. About 1940, the consensus of scholars was that her parents were Auguste Théodore, a free black, and Marie, a mixed-race Creole, and Adah was raised as a Catholic. Ed James, a journalist friend, wrote after her death: “Her real name was Adelaide McCord, and she was born at Milneburg, near New Orleans, on June 15, 1835.”〔Barca, Dane. “Adah Isaacs Menken: Race and Transgendered Performance in the Nineteenth Century.” ''MELUS'', Volume 29. Number 3-4. (2004): pp. 293-306. ISBN 978-0-554-93218-7〕 She may have recounted this version as well. She had a sister and a brother.〔 In 1990, John Cofran, using census records, said that she was born as Ada C. McCord, in Memphis, Tennessee in late 1830, the daughter of an Irish merchant Richard McCord and his wife Catherine.〔John Cofran, "The Identity of Adah Isaacs Menken: A Theatrical Mystery Solved", ''Theatre Survey'', Vol. 31, 1990〕〔Brooks, Daphne A. “Lady Menken’s Secret: Adah Isaacs Menken, Actress Biographies and the Race for Sensation.” ''Legacy'', Volume 15. Number 1. (1998): pages 68-77.〕 According to Cofran, her father died when she was young and her mother remarried; the family moved from Memphis to New Orleans. Based on Menken's assertions of being a native of New Orleans, Wolf Mankowitz and others have studied Board of Health records for the city. They have concluded that Ada was born in the city as the legitimate daughter of Auguste Théodore, a free man of color (mixed race) and his wife Magdaleine Jean Louis Janneaux,〔〔Wolf Mankowitz, ''Mazeppa: The Lives, Loves, and Legends of Adah Isaacs Menken,'' New York: Stein and Day, 1982〕 likely also a Louisiana Creole. Ada would have been raised as Catholic. Ada was said to have been a bright student; she became fluent in French (which Creoles used and was still a prominent language in New Orleans) and Spanish.〔(Samuel Dickson, "Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868)" ), KPO/KNBC radio script, later collected in ''San Francisco is Your Home,'' Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1947; hosted at The Virtual Museum of San Francisco, accessed 8 August 2012〕 She was described as having a gift for languages.〔 As a child, Adah performed as a dancer in the ballet of the French Opera House in New Orleans. In her later childhood, she performed as a dancer in Havana, Cuba, where she was crowned "Queen of the Plaza".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adah Isaacs Menken」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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