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Edith Craig
-
Standard Name: Craig, Edith
Birth Name: Ailsa Edith Geraldine Craig
Nickname: Edy
Self-constructed Name: Ailsa Craig
EC
was primarily a theatre practitioner, known chiefly for her Pioneer Players
, the women's theatre company she founded in 1911. Her literary output was scant. She published a handful of articles on stagecraft, and contributed to a revised edition of her mother Ellen Terry
's memoirs. She also wrote one unpublished play for children. Her unpublished papers—correspondence, prompt books, and playbills—document her significant contribution to feminist theatre history.
Connections
| Connections | Author name Sort descending | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Performance of text | Colette | She was revising the novel at Rozven in Brittany (near St Malo) in July 1919. Colette,. Lettres à Sa Fille, 1916-1953. Editor Jouvenel, Anne de, Gallimard. 29n1 OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999. |
| Textual Production | Clemence Dane | Thorndike and her husband Lewis Casson
, who had been in other plays by CD
, both appeared in this drama set in a home for the elderly. The character of Blanche Carroll was based... |
| Publishing | Charlotte Despard | This was one of the earliest publications of the International Suffrage Shop
, established the same year by Sime Seruya
in the London home of St John and Edith Craig
. It had already appeared... |
| Friends, Associates | Radclyffe Hall | During the 1920s, RH
and Una Troubridge
were friends with a wide range of writers, actors, and artists, including Ida Wylie
, Romaine Brooks
, Natalie Barney
, Noël Coward
, Tallulah Bankhead
, and... |
| Performance of text | Cicely Hamilton | Later that year it toured provincial suffrage societies for the Actresses' Franchise League
, under the direction of Edith Craig
. It eventually became a staple piece for Craig's Pioneer Players
. |
| Textual Features | Cicely Hamilton | The pageant required more than fifty actresses, only three of whom had speaking parts, to portray famous women from history (not all of them remembered today). In the initial, Scala production, the only speaking role... |
| Reception | Cicely Hamilton | The play was both a critical success and enormously popular, though some trade papers attacked it as being propagandist. Whitelaw, Lis. The Life and Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton. Women’s Press. 88 |
| Performance of text | Cicely Hamilton | The premiere of CH
's suffrage drama A Pageant of Great Women, with direction and some collaboration by Edith Craig
, was given at the Scala Theatre
in London. Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 220 Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 82-3 Cockin, Katharine. “Cicely Hamilton’s Warriors: dramatic reinventions of militancy in the British women’s suffrage movement”. Women’s History Review, Vol. 14 , No. 3/4, pp. 527-42. 529 |
| Performance of text | Cicely Hamilton | CH
's performance piece known as The Anti-Suffrage Waxworks was taken on tour by Edith Craig
for the Actresses' Franchise League
. Demastes, William W., and Katherine E. Kelly, editors. British Playwrights, 1880-1956. Greenwood Press. 193 Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 100 |
| Performance of text | Cicely Hamilton | Jack and Jill and a Friend, CH
's comic drama about the difficulties of being a woman writer, was performed by the Pioneer Players
at the Kingsway Theatre
in London, directed by Edith Craig
. Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 221 Whitelaw, Lis. The Life and Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton. Women’s Press. 124-5 |
| Leisure and Society | Cicely Hamilton | A striking photographic portrait of CH
by Lena Connell
, taken in 1912, is now in the National Portrait Gallery
. Williams, Val, and Susan Bright. How We Are: Photographing Britain. Tate Publishing. 78 |
| Performance of text | Constance Holme | CH
's dialect play The Home of Vision (one of her only two dramatic pieces to be performed in London over the course of her career) was acted by Edith Craig
's Pioneer Players
. Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford. |
| Performance of text | Edith Lyttelton | Edith Craig
's Pioneer Players
mounted a production of Two Pierrots, EL
's adaptation of Rostand
's play Les deux Pierrots (which has been described as a curtain-raiser), at London's Little Theatre
. Nicoll, Allardyce. English Drama, 1900-1930. Cambridge University Press. 797 Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true. |
| Textual Production | George Paston | GP
's Clothes and the Woman: A Comedy in Three Acts was first produced by the Pioneers
at the Imperial Theatre
. These Pioneers are not the same group as Edith Craig
's feminist Pioneer Players
. Nicoll, Allardyce. English Drama, 1900-1930. Cambridge University Press. 875 Kaplan, Joel H., and Sheila Stowell. Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes. Cambridge University Press. 164 |
| Performance of text | Vita Sackville-West | VSW
gave a reading of The Land at the Barn Theatre at Smallhythe, run by Edith Craig
and Christopher St John
. Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin. 251 |
Timeline
June 1908: The Women Writers' Suffrage League was established...
National or international item
June 1908
23 July 1910: A march in London was held in support of...
Building item
23 July 1910
A march in London was held in support of the Conciliation Bill; originally proposed by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
, it was eventually taken over by the Women's Social and Political Union
.
June 1925: The Independent Labour Party founded an Arts...
Writing climate item
June 1925
The Independent Labour Party
founded an Arts Guild
to promote socialist drama and performance.
December 1927: Three months after the dancer Isadora Duncan...
Building item
December 1927
Three months after the dancer Isadora Duncan
died at nearly fifty, as melodramatically as she had lived, her autobiography, My Life, appeared from the new publishing firm Gollancz
. It became an immediate best-seller...
Texts
Terry, Ellen. “Preface; Biographical Chapters”. Ellen Terry’s Memoirs, edited by Edith Craig and Christopher St John, Benjamin Blom, 1969, pp. v - xi; 279.