Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Henrik Ibsen
-
Standard Name: Ibsen, Henrik
The plays of Henrik Ibsen
, nineteenth-century Norwegian poet and dramatist, were both controversial and enormously influential in Britain; their use of realist techniques to address contemporary social problems helped to bring about a revolution in English drama. Elizabeth Robins
and Florence Farr
played important roles in getting his plays staged in England, and Robins interpreted his characters on stage. After the 1889 production of A Doll's House in London, British feminists claimed Ibsen as an ally, and his name became closely associated with New Woman writers such as George Egerton
and Mona Caird
. Githa Sowerby
and Elizabeth Baker
were among the many dramatists influenced by his work.
From Methuen's first-published author, Edna Lyall
, she traces the firm's dealings with other progressive activists, with canonical names in many genres including books for children, and with such controversial figures as Ibsen
, Wilde
, and Lawrence
.
One piece critiques Shaw
's clinical treatment of his female models: [H]e seats her in a dentist's chair, puts a gag in her mouth, isolates a tooth as ruthlessly as any dentist and then takes...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
She praises Ibsen
's characterization of women. [A] man that thoroughly understands a woman, she writes, was a very great man indeed. There are two or three people who can tell stories about her, and...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
Ibsen
and the Actress, ER
's reminiscences of her early acting career, was published by the Hogarth Press
.
It was no. 15 of the Hogarth Essays, Second Series.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
66
Robins, Elizabeth. Ibsen and the Actress. Hogarth Press.
Textual Production
Storm Jameson
Decades later she remembered praising Chekhov
, Hoffmansthal
, Ibsen
, and Strindberg
, while admitting that I mocked, censured, rebuked, tore down, with reckless delight, Shaw
, Yeats
, Masefield
,
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row.
69
and other British dramatists.
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
ER
played an important role, until recently unacknowledged, as collaborator in William Archer
's early translations of Ibsen
's plays, as well as other contributions to the new drama movement.
Textual Production
Ann Jellicoe
AJ
knew from an early age that she wanted to work in the theatre. At school she put together amateur productions of many of her own creations. Her first work to achieve a professional production...
Textual Production
George Bernard Shaw
GBS
wrote The Philanderer, a problem play that pits Ibsen
ite morality against Victorian hypocrisy.
Innes, Christopher, editor. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw. Cambridge University Press.
xxii
Textual Production
Matilda Betham-Edwards
Helen Black questioned her closely about her preferences in literature, and learned that Betham-Edwards endeavour[ed] to appreciate all the living novelists, but found the school of Tolstoy
, Ibsen
, and Zolarepulsive in the...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jolley
EJ
invoked as an appropriate description of her own motivation, Flaubert
's dictum that writing comes from an inner wound.
Joussen, Ulla. “An Interview with Elizabeth Jolley”. Kunapipi, Vol.
15
, No. 2, pp. 37-43.
40
She said of Johnson
's Rasselas and Goethe
's Elective Affinities (both of which...
Textual Production
George Bernard Shaw
GBS
published The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a defence of Ibsen
in the wake of public controversy over the first English productions of A Doll's House and Ghosts.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Innes, Christopher, editor. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw. Cambridge University Press.
xxi
Textual Production
Hannah Lynch
The English print-run of the Echegaray translation was 400 copies. Lynch's solid, 30-page introduction, in part reprinted from the Contemporary Review, makes no attempt at boosting her subject. She compares Echegaray
in his various...
Textual Production
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
's prose works included a discursive and elusive autobiography, and a biography: Sir George Goldie
, Founder of Nigeria, A Memoir. This was, she said, a record of her conversations with Goldie...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Robins
ER
, Marion Lea
, and William Archermodified for stage production Edmund Gosse
's translation of Ibsen
's Hedda Gabler (published earlier the same year).
John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862-1952. Routledge.
55-7
Textual Features
Violet Hunt
VH
's central character here is Phoebe Elles, described by Barbara Belford
as a British version of Flaubert
's Madame Bovary.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
108
Phoebe is unhappily married to (and soon leaves) her abusive husband Mortimer; looking...
Timeline
1888: Eleanor Marx's translation of An Enemy of...
Writing climate item
1888
Eleanor Marx
's translation of An Enemy of the People by Ibsen
appeared in The Pillars of Society and Other Plays, edited by Havelock Ellis
.
February 1891: Theatre producer and critic J. T. Grein founded...
Building item
February 1891
Theatre producer and critic J. T. Grein
founded the Independent Theatre Society
in London to promote literary rather than commercial plays, and the new drama in particular.
Autumn 1904 to summer 1907: Under the management of playwright and director...
Ibsen, Henrik. John Gabriel Borkman. Gyldendal (F. Hegel), 1896.
Ibsen, Henrik. Når vi døde vågner. Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag (F. Hegel & Søn), 1899.
Ibsen, Henrik. “Note”. The Pillars of Society and Other Plays, edited by Havelock Ellis, translated by. William Archer et al., Walter Scott, 1888, p. xxxi.
Ibsen, Henrik. Peer Gynt. Gyldendal (F. Hegel), 1867.
