In the early morning of 7 September 1838, Grace Darling, the daughter of the keeper of the Longstone Light on the Farne Isles, rowed with her father to rescue survivors from the wrecked steamer Forfarshire. Her heroism caused a sensation. She was asked to appear at a London theatre and an Edinburgh circus. Queen Victoria headed the subscription list for a fund to support her, and Wordsworth was one of many poets who sang her praises. Immediately a national heroine, Britain's Joan of Arc, her fame spread throughout the world. "Grace Darling: Victorian Heroine" tells the extraordinary story of how Grace became a celebrity, her name and image used to sell books, soap and chocolates; and of how, since her tragic early death in 1842, her deed and her fame have been kept alive into the twenty-first century.

Author Biography

Professor of History at the University of Kent, and author of Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, c. 1780-1880, The Crisis of Imperialism, 1865-1915 and Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 1876.