The Dancing Faun
Florence Farr
eBook
(, March 18, 2009)
Florence Beatrice Emery (née) Farr (7 July 1860—29 April 1917) was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, leader of a secret occult order, and one time mistress of playwright George Bernard Shaw. She was a friend and collaborator with Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, poet Ezra Pound, playwright Oscar Wilde, artists Aubrey Beardsley and Pamela Colman Smith, Masonic scholar Arthur Edward Waite, theatrical producer Annie Horniman, and many other literati of London's Fin de siècle era, and even by their standards she was "the bohemian's bohemian". Though not as well-known as some of her contemporaries and successors, Farr was a "First Wave" Feminist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; she publicly advocated for suffrage, workplace equality, and equal protection under the law for women, writing a book and many articles in intellectual journals on the rights of "the modern woman".* *.....summary from Wikipedia The Dancing Faun is a chilly, fast-paced story told with wit and deadly charm. The cold and frustrating characters first appear uncomplicated. It reads as a play, the characters appearing as if on cue and the scenes changing quickly. The presence of Florence permeates it. Her assertion that the characters are not taken from real life is untrue. Certainly they, and their ideas, are based on those around her. It is satirical, mocking, frivolous, and Florence claims to have written it as a 'bit of a joke'. It is the kind of vengeance fantasy one may have if wronged. Farr's esoteric ideas also just peep through the story. Florence was eager for it to be promoted when it was first published.** **.....from Fields Book Store Prefatory Note from the book: "Owing to the circumstances which have arisen since this story was written in the summer of 1893, it seems necessary to state that it is purely a work of the imagination and that none of the characters or events are taken from real life." Florence Farr