The exploits of Lola Montez - onstage as a dancer and an actress, in politics as a power behind thrones, and in bedrooms around the world - made her one of the best-known women of the Victorian era. Born Eliza Gilbert, daughter of British and Irish parents, she transformed herself into an aristocratic Spanish dancer, carrying on an audacious masquerade that took her to Europe, America, and Australia and attracting admirers and scandal wherever she went.

When she died in 1861 at age forty, her obituary appeared in papers around the world. Yet her true story has always been obscured by the web of lies that she herself constructed. This absorbing and entertaining biography of Lola Montez is the first to reveal the facts of her incredible life.