Adelaide Neilson

Lilian Adelaide Neilson (3 March 184815 August 1880), born Elizabeth Ann Brown, was a British stage actress.

Early life

Neilson was the daughter of an actress, Anne Brown, and was born, out of wedlock, at 35 St Peters Square Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In childhood she was known as Elizabeth Anne Bland, her mother having subsequently married a mechanic and house decorator named Samuel Bland. She grew up in relative poverty, initially in Skipton and later Guiseley, West Yorkshire (near Leeds). She attended a Wesleyan Methodist Sunday school and then worked at a mill in Guiseley and as a nursery maid.

When she was about 15 years old Neilson secretly left her home and made her way to London. She was 16 or 17 years old at the time of her marriage. At her later adult baptism at St. Peter's Church, Leeds on 30 December 1866 (born 3 March 1848) she claimed to be named Lilian Adelaide Lizon, daughter of the Spanish couple Pierre and Annie Lizon of St. Peters Square, and Pierre's quality being described as gentleman. she appeared at Sarah Thorne's Theatre Royal (Margate), long a training-school for novices, where she made a favourable impression. In 1865, at Theatre Royal (Margate), she appeared as Julia in The Hunchback, a character with which her name was long to be associated.

For the next few years, she played at London and provincial theatres in various roles, including Rosalind, Amy Robsart and Rebecca (in Ivanhoe), Beatrice, Viola and Isabella (in Measure for Measure). She made her first American appearance on 18 November 1872, at Booth's Theatre, New York City, as Juliet.

She was praised by American critics who echoed the acclaim she had received from London theatrical audiences. The American drama critic William Winter wrote that: "Her face just sufficiently unsymmetrical to be brimful of character [...] the carriage of her body [...] like that of a pretty child in the unconscious fascination of infancy [...] and above all of these [...] was a voice of perfect music."