Menken, Adah Isaacs, 1835-1868

Actress and author.

From the description of Adah Isaacs Menken papers, 1862-1925. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 70980303

American actress active in England.

From the description of Autograph letter signed, dated : Liverpool, 19 April [n.y.], to [Edward Tyrrell] Smith, [n.y., Apr. 19]. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270582298

Adah Isaacs Menken was born in Milneburg (a suburb of New Orleans), Louisiana, in 1835. Learned in Bible, literature and languages (including Latin and Hebrew), she served at one time as a teacher in a girls' school. Menken married Alexander Isaac Menken in 1856, and the couple lived first in New Orleans (where Menken began performing to earn money) and then in Cincinnati. She began publishing poems (some in Isaac Mayer Wise's Israelite ), and she lobbied intensely for Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild to be able to claim the seat in the English Parliament which was being denied him because he was a Jew.

Menken and her husband divorced (by rabbinical divorce), after which she moved to New York and had three unhappy marriages (to non-Jews).

Menken's fame as an actor spread with her portrayal of Mazeppa in the adaptation of the Byron play in 1861. Literary men, including Mark Twain, and later Charles Dickens and Charles Reade, flocked to her side. During the great Exposition in Paris, "she became the darling and the rumored mistress of kings and princes; and she cultivated her intimate and ambiguous friendship with the elderly Alexandre Dumas. She returned to London and was involved with the poet Swinburne. In 1868 she left for Paris again, to appear in a new production; but very soon the ailments that had set in years before brought on her death, in an attic room opposite the theatre. Among others, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited her; and the poet Thomas Buchanan Read was with her to the end. A rabbi attended her last hours."

Two volumes of Menken's poetry were published, Infelicia (1868) and Memoirs (1856).

1 Source: The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 7.

From the guide to the Adah Isaacs Menken, collection, undated, 1862-1868, (American Jewish Historical Society)