A FORMER Keighley News reporter’s fascination with Victorian parachutist Lily Cove has already inspired news articles and a play.

Now Sharon Wright has written a book about not only Lily, who fell to her death over the Brontë moors, but a host of female aeronauts.

Balloonomania Belles: Daredevil Divas Who First Took To The Sky portrays the fascinating lives and often terrible deaths of the airborne celebrities.

Sharon, who has written for many national newspapers and magazines, has carried out extensive research into these feisty females of early flight.

In her book, she investigates the tragic story of parachutist Lily, whose mysterious death in Haworth in 1906 sent shockwaves around the world.

Sharon reveals the dark past that made ‘Leaping Lily’ run away with the flying circus and become a starlet of the skies… until she met her terrible, unexplained fate one Edwardian summer.

Balloonomania Belles is published by Pen & Sword Books and costs £19.99.

Lady aeronauts were the liberated stars of saucy cartoons, ludicrous fashions, balloon riots, death-defying experiments and fabulous feuds from the 1780s to 1900s.

Sharon realised these women had been largely forgotten, and set out to reveal their gripping true stories.

The publisher said: “Sharon reveals the show-stopping stories of the female pioneers of balloon flight, from the have-a-go-Georgians to the irrepressible Edwardians.

“More than a hundred years before Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart, women were heading for the heavens in crazy, inspired contraptions that could bring death or glory and all too often, both.

“They were actresses, writers, heiresses, scientists, explorers, showgirls and suffragettes in the glorious golden age of ballooning – before war clouds and planes changed the skies forever.”

Women were in the vanguard of the ‘balloonomania’ craze that took hold in the late 18th century and endured for decades.

When women suffered second-class status on the ground they managed to join the thrilling human quest for spectacle and discovery on equal terms among the clouds. From the first courageous ascent in 1784 women never looked back. Or down.

Sharon, who now lives in South West London with her family, has worked as a writer, editor and columnist for the Guardian, Daily Express, BBC, Disney, Glamour, Red and Take a Break.

She has written critically-acclaimed plays performed in Yorkshire and London, including Friller, which told the story of Lily Cove.

Visit sharon-wright-agency.co.uk for further information