
The First Actress
A Novel of Sarah Bernhardt
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Narrated by:
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Gabrielle De Cuir
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By:
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C. W. Gortner
About this listen
“This novel about Sarah Bernhardt, the iconic French actress, is both a riveting portrait of the artist as a passionate young woman and a luscious historical novel full of period detail.” (Melanie Benjamin, New York Times best-selling author of Mistress of the Ritz and The Aviator’s Wife)
From her beginnings as the daughter of a courtesan to her extraordinary transformation into the most celebrated actress of her era, Sarah Bernhardt is brought to life by an internationally best-selling author praised for his historical novels featuring famous women.
Sarah’s highly dramatic life starts when she returns to Paris after her convent schooling and is confronted by her mother’s demand to follow in the family trade as a courtesan. To escape this fate, Sarah pursues a career onstage at the esteemed Comédie-Française, until her rebellious acting style leads to her scandalous dismissal. Only 19 years old and unemployed, Sarah is forced to submit to her mother’s wishes. But her seductive ease as a courtesan comes to an abrupt end when she discovers she is pregnant. Unwilling to give up her child, Sarah defies social condemnation and is cast adrift, penniless and alone.
With her striking beauty and innovative performances in a bohemian theater, Sarah catapults to unexpected success; suddenly, audiences clamor to see this controversial young actress. But her world is torn asunder by the brutal 1870 siege of Paris. Sarah refuses to abandon the ravaged city, nursing wounded soldiers and risking her life.
Her return to the Comédie and her tempestuous affair with her leading man plunge Sarah into a fierce quest for independence. Undeterred, she risks everything to become France’s most acclaimed actress, enthralling audiences with her shocking portrayals of female and male characters. Sarah’s daring talent and outrageous London engagement pave her path to worldwide celebrity, with sold-out tours in Europe and America.
Told in her own voice, this is Sarah Bernhardt’s incandescent story - a fascinating, intimate account of a woman whose unrivaled talent and indomitable spirit has enshrined her in history as the Divine Sarah.
©2020 C. W. Gortner (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Sarah Bernhardt was a woman of fearless strength and awe-inspiring talent, both a living icon in her day and an unapologetic iconoclast. In his beautiful The First Actress, C. W. Gortner gives readers an intimate and rich portrait of Bernhardt’s stunning career and tumultuous personal life. The Divine Sarah was a singular leading lady ahead of her time, winning devotees and breaking rules in order to demand more for artists and for women.” (Allison Pataki, New York Times best-selling author of The Queen’s Fortune)
“C. W. Gortner has made his mark illuminating the private lives and untold stories of the world’s greatest women. In The First Actress, he turns his talent to Sarah Bernhardt, the daughter of a Dutch Jewish courtesan who would rise over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to become an icon of stage and screen. Readers will revel in the gloriously heady mix of love and war, and art and society. Combining immaculate research with scintillating prose and an unforgettable cast of larger-than-life characters, The First Actress stands tall among Gortner’s remarkable body of work.” (Pam Jenoff, New York Times best-selling author of The Lost Girls of Paris)
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An enjoyable listen
- By missgrundy on 01-19-18
By: Allison Pataki, and others
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Daughters of the Dust
- A Gullah-Geechee Novel
- By: Julie Dash
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing from the magical world of her iconic Sundance award-winning film, Julie Dash’s stand-alone novel tells another rich, historical tale of the Gullah-Geechee people: a multigenerational story about a Brooklyn College anthropology student who finds an unexpected homecoming when she heads to the South Carolina Sea Islands to study her ancestors.
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My BFF Bahni...
- By Lillian Collins on 12-31-22
By: Julie Dash
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Our Kind of People
- By: Carol Wallace
- Narrated by: Suzanne Barbetta
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Helen Wilcox has one desire: to successfully launch her daughters into society. From the upper crust herself, Helen's unconventional--if happy--marriage has made the girls' social position precarious. Then her husband gambles the family fortunes on an elevated railroad that he claims will transform the face of the city and the way the people of New York live, but will it ruin the Wilcoxes first? As daughters Jemima and Alice navigate the rise and fall of their family--each is forced to re-examine who she is, and even who she is meant to love.
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Entertaining and delightful!
- By Val C, Bermuda. on 10-07-24
By: Carol Wallace
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The Orphan's Song
- By: Lauren Kate
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Venice, 1736. When fate brings Violetta and Mino together on the roof of the Hospital of the Incurables, they form a connection that will change their lives forever. Both are orphans at the Incurables, dreaming of escape. But when the resident Maestro notices Violetta's voice, she is selected for the Incurables' world famous coro, and must sign an oath never to sing beyond its church doors. After a declaration of love ends in heartbreak, Mino flees the Incurables in search of his family. Venice is full of secrets, and Mino is certain one will lead to his long-lost mother.
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Fate really has a sense of humor!
- By Kay on 07-22-19
By: Lauren Kate
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Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?
- Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag
- By: Craig Seligman
- Narrated by: Mela Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, gay men and lesbians were openly despised and drag queens scared the public. Yet that was the era when Doris Fish (born Philip Mills in 1952) painted and padded his way to stardom. He was a leader of the generation that prepared the world not just for drag queens on TV but for a society that welcomes and even celebrates queer people. How did we get from there to here? In Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Craig Seligman looks at Doris’s short but overstuffed life as a way to provide some answers.
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A fantastic portal back to another era in San Francisco
- By Michael S. on 11-17-24
By: Craig Seligman
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The Slaughterman's Daughter
- A Novel
- By: Yaniv Iczkovits
- Narrated by: Tovah Feldshuh
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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With her reputation as a vilde chaya (wild animal), Fanny Keismann isn’t like the other women in her shtetl in the Pale of Settlement - certainly not her obedient and anxiety-ridden sister, Mende, whose “philosopher” of a husband has run off to Minsk, abandoning her and their two children. As a young girl, Fanny felt an inexorable pull toward her father’s profession of ritual slaughterer and, under his reluctant guidance, became a master with a knife. And though she long ago gave up that unsuitable profession, Fanny still keeps the knife tied to her right leg.
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The narration - why?????
- By agarista on 07-20-21
By: Yaniv Iczkovits
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The Magic Kingdom
- A Novel
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell, MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early 20th century, Harley recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida’s swamplands—mere miles away from what would become Disney World—to join a community of Shakers.
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Dry account of a shaker love story
- By Sylvia Pinegar on 01-02-23
By: Russell Banks
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The Incorrigibles
- A Novel
- By: Meredith Jaeger
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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1890, San Francisco. Seduced by her employer’s nephew, Annie Gilmurray, an Irish maid, is accused of stealing the ring he promised her. Sentenced to one year in San Quentin, Annie is heartbroken and frightened among the inmates of the women’s ward: prostitutes, murderers, and pickpockets. But Annie finds beauty and friendship in a brutal place, where the women look out for one another, dreaming of a better life after release. But their world inside San Quentin's walls is a dangerous one, and when the unthinkable happens, Annie makes a choice that will alter the course of her future forever.
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A page-turner following strong women finding their agency imbued with rich, local SF history
- By S. Brett on 06-04-24
By: Meredith Jaeger
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Sirens & Muses
- A Novel
- By: Antonia Angress
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors.
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Love the messiness! Everyone’s a mess!
- By Cierra Brown on 08-24-24
By: Antonia Angress
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Unmarriageable
- A Novel
- By: Soniah Kamal
- Narrated by: Soniah Kamal
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this one-of-a-kind retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry - until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider.
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Could be entertaining if not for unlikable heroine
- By Web_mistress on 02-06-19
By: Soniah Kamal
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Arrowood
- A Novel
- By: Laura McHugh
- Narrated by: Sarah Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It’s where Arden Arrowood’s younger twin sisters vanished on her watch 20 years ago - never to be seen again. After the twins’ disappearance, Arden’s parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden’s own life has fallen apart: She can’t finish her master’s thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly.
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Haunting and Powerful
- By Jim N on 04-23-17
By: Laura McHugh
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The Majority
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth L. Silver
- Narrated by: Sierra Prasada
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Half of the United States is waiting for Justice Sylvia Olin Bernstein to die. The other half is praying for her to hold on. At 83, “the contemptuous S.O.B.” doesn’t have much time left. What she has is a story, one she has wrested from the grip of history to tell herself—of how she rose to her historic position on the Supreme Court, and the barriers she broke along the way.
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Unusual story - what makes a supreme court justice
- By Angela on 07-14-23
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Scarlet in Blue
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Murphy
- Narrated by: Justis Bolding, Stephen Graybill, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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For Blue Lake’s entire life, she and her mother, Scarlet, have been on the run from HIM - the man who Scarlet, a talented and enigmatic painter, insists is chasing them. But now, at 15 years old, Blue has begun to resent the nomadic life that once seemed like an adventure, increasingly unsure what to make of the phantom pursuer she’s never seen. She only yearns to settle down in one place, to live a normal life.
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Great production of a good and interesting book
- By K. Gruber on 07-19-23
By: Jennifer Murphy
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The Masterpiece
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this latest captivating novel, New York Times best-selling author Fiona Davis takes listeners into the glamorous lost art school within Grand Central Terminal, where two very different women, 50 years apart, strive to make their mark on a world set against them. For most New Yorkers, Grand Central Terminal is a crown jewel, a masterpiece of design. But for Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, it represents something quite different. For Clara, the terminal is the stepping stone to her future. It is 1928, and Clara is teaching at the lauded Grand Central School of Art.
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If you want a novel that has everything...
- By Debra Jo on 09-10-18
By: Fiona Davis
She was a true trailblazer.
Fascinating
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A great woman
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Great narration.
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Didn't care for Sarah
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Another masterpiece by Gortner
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Enjoyable
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Have read everything by this author.....not my favorite of his books.
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And as the author points out in his Afterword, Sarah Bernardt continues to be a muse for today's independent woman.
Thank you Mr.Gortner for bringing this inspiring heroine to life.
Delightful escape from the stress of 2020
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Great narration on a fascinating story
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C.W.Gortner does not disappoint !
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