ADAH ISAACS

MENKEN (1835-1868)  , American actress, was born in New Orleans, the daughter of a Spanish Jew, her name being Dolores Adios Fuertes . Left in poverty at the age of thirteen, she made her first appearance as a dancer in her native city . She had a great success there and in other southern cities, including Havana, and she afterwards aspired to act in serious parts . In 1856 she married John Isaacs Menken, translated Adios to Adah, and thus took the name she there-after bore through various matrimonial ventures . In 1864 she appeared at Astley's in London as Mazeppa, a performance of an athletic dramatic type suited to her fine physique . In England and France she became intimate with many literary men—Swinburne, Charles Reade, Dickens (to whom she dedicated in 1868 a volume of verse, Infelicia), Gautier and Dumas the elder . Paris saw her for a hundred nights in Les Pirates de la Savane, and she also played in Vienna and again in London . She died in Paris on the loth of August i868 .