The Lady From Louisville

Sunday, October 11, 2015

If you enjoy Martha Rofheart's books and stories, please like us on Facebook, Martha Rofheart Author.

Posted by evananda at 11:17 PM

by John Sloan / 1940

evananda: Martha Rofheart (1917 - 1990) was an American writer of historical novels and an actress. She was born Martha Jones May 27, 1917 in Louisville, KY. As actress in the 1940s and 1950s, she made her Broadway debut with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in "The Pirate" in 1942. She appeared in "Blythe Spirit", "Arsenic and Old Lace", "The Heiress", "The Respectful Prostitute", and other plays, and toured with Katherine Cornell, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and Maurice Evans. In the early 1970s, Rofheart wrote a novel of Henry V of England, "Fortune Made His Sword", published in the UK as "Cry God For Harry". Critic Granville Hicks, reviewing "Fortune Made His Sword" in The New York Times Book Review, wrote that Rofheart "deftly avoids the dangers" of writing about a subject that's "Shakespeare territory". After "Fortune Made His Sword", Rofheart wrote five novels, "Glendower Country", in the UK published as "Cry God for Glendower", My Name Is Sappho, a fictionalized theatrical family saga entitled, "The Savage Brood","The Alexandrian" the story of Cleopatra, and "Lionheart!: A Novel of Richard I, King of England".