Bad Girls from History: Wicked or Misunderstood?

British historian Gordon delivers a slim yet rollicking survey of 100 female renegades, many of whom would otherwise remain on history’s margins. Gordon categorizes her subjects by different aspects of notoriety and opens with sexual misconduct, focusing mainly on the class of women who consorted with the English royal family, including Camilla Parker-Bowles’s ancestor Alice Keppel (1868–1947), the most enduring of King Edward VII’s mistresses. Biographical sketches of mass murderers, such as the 19th century Mary Ann Cotton, known as the Black Widow, are separated from those of wives who took revenge on abusive husbands, such as “Killarney Kate,” who fed her husband arsenic in 1935. Gordon rounds out the book with pickpockets, plunderers, gunslingers, and eccentrics such as Princess Caraboo, aka Mary Baker, an English servant who reinvented herself as a foreign princess. Newspaper clippings and photos of the subjects bring colorful characters, such as accused axe murderer Lizzie Borden and Bonnie Parker, to life. Dee provides no clear methodology for the selection process, and some choices, such as novelist Colette and actress Ava Gardner, are juicy nonconformists rather than evildoers. Still, this compendium of historical trivia is a lot of fun to read. (Dec.)