Book
Entertaining Mr Pepys
London, 1666. Elizabeth Carpenter, later known as the actress and singer Elizabeth Knepp, enters marriage expecting security but finds her husband Christopher controlling and hostile to her ambitions. A clandestine visit to the theatre reveals a new professional world just as women are beginning to establish themselves on the English public stage.
Bird’s determination to perform brings her into the orbit of Samuel Pepys and other figures of Restoration theatrical life, including Nell Gwyn. The Great Fire transforms the city around them and intensifies the risks of a life already divided between marriage and the stage. The novel reconstructs Knepp as an artist in her own right rather than simply one of the women recorded in Pepys’s diary.
More by the author
