Hannah Cowley

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Standard Name: Cowley, Hannah
Birth Name: Hannah Parkhouse
Married Name: Hannah Cowley
Pseudonym: Anna Matilda
Used Form: Mrs Cowley
Used Form: Mrs Cowley, the Author of the Runaway, A Comedy
HC , who is said to have become a dramatist by accident and who probably persevered out of necessity, achieved in time great stage success during the late eighteenth century. She was well acquainted with the plays of her female predecessors, and often made use of them. She also wrote poetry, and may possibly have written a novel.
Print of the young Hannah Cowley. She sits on a chair in front of a heavy curtain pulled back. Her body is turned to her right, while she looks to the left in semi-profile. She holds a book on her lap, and wears a gown with short sleeves and low neckline, and long gloves. Her hair is styled in a mass of curls on her head and falling down her back.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Hannah More
HM probably gave up the theatre (both writing for it and attending plays) less because of the loss of David Garrick or the conflict with Hannah Cowley than because of her religious belief, which presented...
Textual Production Mary Russell Mitford
MRM wrote her first attempt, Fiesco, in early 1821, inspired (like Hannah Cowley ) by seeing a mediocre tragedy which she felt she could outdo.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
1: 354, 356
Rejected by Macready , it survives...
Textual Production Jean Marishall
Years later JM published her vivid account of her struggles to get this novel published. She began writing because she thought (like Hannah Cowley a few years later) that she could do better than what...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Maria Mackenzie
Meanwhile the heroine, Maria Stanley, is unjustly spurned by her husband because he believes the lying insinuations of a jealous and wicked woman whom he has rejected, but the truth is revealed in time for...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anna Margaretta Larpent
This diary, covering thirteen years of her later teens and her twenties, provides an annual list of people she spent her time with, public places she visited, and private entertainments she enjoyed. Its criticism, mostly...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Theresa Kemble
The title alludes to Hannah Cowley 's very popular The Belle's Stratagem, 1780. MTK 's heroine, like hers, is lively and witty. Lady Emily spars verbally with her suitor O'Donolan, and keeps her freedom...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Inchbald
EI was also professionally acquainted with the dramatist Hannah Cowley . She was in the cast of Cowley's first hit, The Belle's Stratagem, which opened in February 1780; but a year later, during the...
Textual Features Elizabeth Inchbald
EI did not choose the plays herself. Shakespeare fills the first five volumes, apart from one piece by Ben Jonson , and five of her own plays fill volume 20. The eighteenth century is better...
Material Conditions of Writing Catherine Gore
CG was the first woman to achieve a professional career as a dramatist since Elizabeth Inchbald and Hannah Cowley . She had eleven plays (from one-act farce to high comedy) performed with varying success on...
Literary responses Catherine Gore
Reviews, like that in the Athenæum, were good in the main, and singled out the dialogue for praise even if critical of the character drawing, the plotting, or the level of finish. The Times...
Occupation David Garrick
This began his career as theatre manager. One of a manager's duties might be considered to be the putting on of new plays, to ensure the health of the theatre of the future, but familiar...
Literary responses Anne Damer
AD 's sculpture brought some echoes of the earlier attacks on her. A print displayed in London in July 1789, The Damerian Apollo, showed her in the unfeminine act of taking artistic liberties with...
Intertextuality and Influence Susanna Centlivre
Hannah Cowley borrowed the subplot for Who's the Dupe?, 1779.
Bowyer, John Wilson. The Celebrated Mrs Centlivre. Duke University Press.
50
Literary responses Mary Bryan
The Critical Review gave a couple of paragraphs to the collection, praising its soft and genuine sadness, the easy and unpremeditated . . . singularly graceful language, and the refined, enthusiastic, and cultivated mind
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
there...
Literary responses Frances Brooke
The Critical Review and Gentleman's Magazine were respectful; the Monthly blamed FB for indelicacy in her heroine and for unfairness to Garrick. It quoted testimonials about his care for their work from other women writers,...

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