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
Publishing Hannah More
HM replied to the letter in the St James's Chronicle in which Hannah Cowley accused her of plagiarising, in both Percy and Fatal Falsehood, from Cowley's then still unperformed Albina, Countess Raimond.
Mahotière, Mary de la. Hannah Cowley, Tiverton’s Playwright and Pioneer Feminist (1743-1809). Devon Books.
27-8
Occupation Mary Robinson
MR made her last known London stage appearance, as Victoria in Hannah Cowley 's Bold Stroke for a Husband at Covent Garden .
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
13: 35
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...
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...
Material Conditions of Writing Kate O'Brien
Rather in the manner of Hannah Cowley a century and a half earlier, she wrote the play to win a wager she had made with Veronica Turleigh , a friend from her undergraduate days, who...
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...
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
Miss Aikin's Poems sold five hundred copies in just over four months, and the second edition sold a similar number in a similar period. In September a third edition was announced.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
111
The Monthly Review...
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,...
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 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 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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Jane Austen
JA 's biographer Claire Tomalin lists those women writers who were most important to her, for learning rather than for mockery, as Charlotte Lennox , Frances Burney , Charlotte Smith , Maria Edgeworth , and...
Intertextuality and Influence Aphra Behn
Nancy Copeland has observed in a recent study of Behn, Centlivre , and gender that adaptations of this play, by Eliza Haywood in A Wife to be Lett, 1723, and Hannah Cowley in A...
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

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