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Daisy Goodwin

Author of The American Heiress

27+ Works 4,660 Members 268 Reviews 3 Favorited

About the Author

Daisy Georgia Goodwin was born on December 19, 1961. She is a British television producer, novelist and poet. After attending Westminster School and Queen's College, London Goodwin studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge and attended Columbia Film School before joining the BBC as a trainee show more arts producer in 1985. In 1998, she moved to Talkback Productions, and in 2005, founded Silver River Productions. Her first novel, My Last Duchess, was published in the UK in August 2010 and, under the title The American Heiress, in the U.S. and Canada in June 2011. She has also published eight poetry anthologies and a memoir entitled Silver River, and was chairman of the judging panel for the 2010 Orange Prize for women's fiction. In 2014 her title, The Fortune Hunter made The New York Times Best Seller List. Her titles include The Fortune Hunter, My Last Duchess, Bringing Up Baby: The New Mother's Companion and Poems to Last a Lifetime. Television shows that she has worked on include How Clean is Your House, House Doctor, Grand Designs, Your Money or Your Life and Property Ladder. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Works by Daisy Goodwin

Associated Works

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19th century (64) 2011 (18) adult (12) anthology (34) ARC (14) aristocracy (24) audio (13) audiobook (15) biography (20) Britain (14) British (19) drama (11) DVD (12) ebook (32) England (131) fiction (263) Gilded Age (35) historical (65) historical fiction (345) historical romance (11) history (36) Kindle (32) London (11) love (23) marriage (33) Newport (13) non-fiction (19) novel (17) own (30) poetry (240) poetry anthology (14) Queen Victoria (36) read (32) read in 2011 (14) romance (100) royalty (43) to-read (412) unread (17) Victorian (25) wealth (19)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Goodwin, Daisy
Legal name
Goodwin, Daisy Georgia
Birthdate
1961-12-19
Gender
female
Nationality
UK
Birthplace
London, England, UK
Places of residence
London, England, UK
Education
University of Cambridge
Columbia Film School
Occupations
television producer
writer
novelist
anthologist
historian
journalist (show all 7)
editor
Organizations
British Broadcasting Corporation
Talkback Productions
Silver River Productions
Orange Prize
Short biography
Daisy Georgia Goodwin is an English writer and television producer. She has published several novels and eight anthologies of poetry.

Members

Reviews

This is a fictional account of Queen Victoria from right around when she turned 18 years old (just before she became queen) until she got engaged to Prince Albert, only a year or two after she became queen. So, it focused initially on her (strained) relationship with her mother (in part, due to her mother’s involvement with power-hungry Sir John Conroy). When Victoria became queen, the prime minister at the time, Lord Melbourne, advised her, despite his reputation with women and people worried that he would influence Victoria politically. The story then shifted to her meeting her cousins Ernst and Albert.

I listened to the audio and thought this was very good. In the past few years, I’ve read some about Victoria, so I don’t think anything in this book came as a surprise, but it was interesting and I feel like the author’s writing style is easy to “read” (or, in my case, listen to!).
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LibraryCin | 72 other reviews | Mar 1, 2024 |
Diva is a fabulous depiction of the life of Maria Callas, the famous and powerful soprano opera singer. A huge part of her tale includes her love affair with Ari Onassis. This book kept me spellbound. I know little of the real Maria Callas, but felt her emotions both in her music and her performances and as well her great love and the abuse of that love by Onassis. It was so readable and touching, even when I wanted to scream warnings at Maria.Perhaps Ms. Goodwin took liberties with her portrayal of the great Diva, but I felt it worked well, and I very much enjoyed the book.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.
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c.archer | 10 other reviews | Feb 28, 2024 |
Many years ago I was fortunate to have seen the Play “Master Class” starring Zoe Caldwell as Maria Callas. It was a story of a great opera diva teaching voice to several students while reminiscing about her life. It was a fascinating and extraordinarily well acted play winning several of the actors Tony awards. It was a superb and mostly factual expose of Callas’ life.

Daisy Goodwin has done a admirable job exploring Callas’ life going into detail about her character, her difficulties, her betrayals and her dedication to her instrument and her insistence on performance perfection. Goodwin has paid attention to detail while informing the reader about the politics that the performers of the opera world face from the Managers of the great opera houses, their contemporaries and fellow performers. Any story about Maria Callas has to include her relationship with Aristotle Onassis and Goodwin manages to incorporate amazing sensuality while describing an intricate cat and mouse relationship.

For those who love opera there is always a favorite soprano. It might be Callas, Tebaldi, Peters, Sutherland, Fleming or so many others, but no matter who you favor no one will ever be able to minimize or marginalize the greatness of Maria Callas. I remember a sequence in the play where Caldwell playing Callas berates one of the students for not projecting and reaching for those unreachable notes and the student lashing out saying that she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her voice, her career for a note - and that, whether you liked her voice or not, was what made Callas so great - she always reached for that note.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book and thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a copy.
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½
 
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kimkimkim | 10 other reviews | Feb 11, 2024 |

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Works
27
Also by
1
Members
4,660
Popularity
#5,411
Rating
½ 3.6
Reviews
268
ISBNs
150
Languages
13
Favorited
3

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