Grace Darling: Extraordinary Rescuer or Media Heroine?
What lighthouse enthusiast has not heard of Grace Darling, the daughter of an English lighthouse keeper whose pluck and call to duty in 1838 resulted in the rescue of the survivors of the wrecked steamship Forfarshire? Thanks to flowery Victorian journalism and the British bent for fanfare, Grace's single gallant deed earned her immortality and made her, as biographer Jessica Mitford said, "the first media heroine." Yet her story is barely a glimmer these days-not the popular and embellished tale it was more than a century ago.