[4] Born in 1853 and known as Lillie from childhood, she was the daughter of the Very Reverend William Corbet Le Breton and his wife, Emilie Davis (née Martin), a recognised beauty.

[16] In an interview published in several newspapers (including the Brisbane Herald) in 1882, Lillie Langtry said: It was through Lord Raneleigh [sic] and the painter Frank Miles that I was first introduced to London society ...

[17]In 1877 Lillie's brother Clement Le Breton married Alice, an illegitimate daughter of Thomas Heron Jones, 7th Viscount Ranelagh, who was a friend of their father.

Following a chance meeting with Lillie in London, Ranelagh invited her to a reception attended by several noted artists at the home of Sir John and Lady Sebright at 23 Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge, which took place on 29 April 1877.

[19] Langtry was in mourning for her youngest brother, who had been killed in a riding accident, so in contrast to the elaborate clothes of most women in attendance, she wore a simple black dress (which was to become her trademark) and no jewellery.

We taught her to ride on a fat cob, we bought hats on the only milliner’s shop in the country town of Dunmow, and trimmed them for our idol, and my own infatuation, for its was little less, for lovely Lily Langtry continued for many a day...

"[26]Theo Aronson, royal biographer and author of a book about King Edward’s three “official mistresses”, has put attention to the changing nature of London high society in the late nineteenth century.

By the end of the month the Langtry’s landlady was grumbling about the number of times she was having to answer the door as yet another liveried footman delivered yet another gilt-edged invitation.’[32] The combination of her beauty, personal magnetism and her curiosity value made Lillie one the best-known faces within weeks after Lady Sebright’s party.

Her need was for fame and fortune and to achieve both she used her universally acknowledged beauty and vibrant sensuality, at first artlessly, but later with a courtesan's skill, to gain entry into the wondrously trivial and effete fin de siecle Society circles of the 1870s.'

John Nettles, also born on Jersey, continued that Lillie Langtry enchanted the poet Oscar Wilde and the liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

Wearing a loose red robe and drying her waist-length hair before the fire, she told the reporter that the Le Breton family had a 'prescriptive right' to the deanery of Jersey, which they had held for generations.

Artists in search of best-selling soft-porn pin-ups competed to paint them; their photograph were sold as postcards by the thousands; women stood on benches to spy them over the crowds in the park, and their dresses were instantly copied.

Lillie is alleged to have consummated her relationship with Prince Edward when his wife, Alexandra ("Alix"), refused an invitation to accompany him to a royal house party at Crichel, Dorset, with Lord Arlington in January 1878.

Lady Louise Manchester reported to Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), the Prime Minister at the time, that Prince Edward was 'very snappish' throughout the whole visit; the Langtry's are not mentioned.

My curtseys began with the Prince and Princess of Wales, but they grew less and less profound and more slurred as I remembered I had one more vital moment to face before I was finally "out of the wood".... On the way home from the Palace, Lady Romeny expressed some surprise at the presence of Her Majesty till the very end of this particularly long drawing room but, that evening, while dancing in the Royal Quadrille at a ball at Marlborough House, I was enlightened as to the cause of the Queen's remaining.

[46] On suggestion of his publisher, the royal biographer Theo Aronson wrote a study of the three so-called official mistresses of King Edward VII: Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick and Alice Keppel.

However, the discovery of letters of Lillie Langtry to Arthur Clarence Jones (1854–1930), gives the impression she also had an affair or at least an intimate friendship with this childhood friend of her brothers who continued to live on Jersey.

It was rectified: 'This obituary of the postwar BBC television announcer Mary Malcolm said her mother, Jeanne-Marie, was the daughter of Lillie Langtry and Edward VII, the only one of his illegitimate children he acknowledged.

Following favourable reviews of this first attempt at the stage, and with further coaching, Langtry made her debut before the London public, playing Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer at the West End's Haymarket Theatre in December 1881.

The New York Times thought that Mrs Langtry's jewels were worth $100,000; her attire was so wonderful, so dazzling, so recklessly inappropriate -as it seemed- that a murmur of surprise ran through the auditorium.

[80][81] For nearly a decade, from 1882 to 1891, Langtry had a relationship with an American, Frederick Gebhard, described as a young clubman, sportsman, horse owner, and admirer of feminine beauty, both on and off the stage.

[89] In 1889, Langtry met "an eccentric young bachelor, with vast estates in Scotland, a large breeding stud, a racing stable, and more money than he knew what to do with": this was George Alexander Baird or Squire Abington,[90] as he came to be known.

[99] In 1899, James Machell sold his Newmarket stables to Colonel Harry Leslie Blundell McCalmont, a wealthy racehorse owner, who was Langtry's brother-in-law, having married Hugo de Bathe's sister Winifred in 1897.

Abraham Hayward, an influential journalist, wrote Gladstone a letter, dated 8 January 1882: 'Mrs Langtry, who is an enthusiastic admirer of yours, told me this afternoon that she should be feel highly flattered if you would call on her, and I tell you this, although I fear you have other more pressing overtures just at present.

'In more modern times it was her acting that brought her renown, but in her youth she took London by storm on account of her dazzling loveliness, and it was indeed her good looks and her wit that enabled her to go on the stage when her first husband lost his fortune.

[144] ‘She was one of the first and probably the most popular of the ladies who were universally known at that time as "Society beauties” … Eventually she resolved to go on the stage, and she did an immense amount of work in America as well as in England during a period of about 35 years.

She overcame many obstacles, and, although she was never a great actress, her beauty and her charm of manner brought her a large measure of success.’ The Times published on three different pages a news alert from the correspondent in Paris, a photograph and an obituary.

‘The audience, which included the Prince and Princess of Wales, and representatives of eminence in fashion, art, and literature, received Mrs. Langtry very quietly, but the debutante soon overcame the feeling of prejudice….

[154][155] In the 1944 Universal film The Scarlet Claw, Lillian Gentry, the first murder victim, wife of Lord William Penrose and former actress, is an oblique reference to Langtry.

Langtry is used as a touchstone for old-fashioned manners in Preston Sturges's comedy The Lady Eve (1941), in a scene where a corpulent woman drops a handkerchief on the floor and the hero ignores it.