Susanna Centlivre

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Standard Name: Centlivre, Susanna
Birth Name: Susanna Freeman
Married Name: Susanna Rawkins
Married Name: Susanna Carroll
Married Name: Susanna Centlivre
Married Name: Susanna Ustick
Married Name: Susanna Fox
Pseudonym: Astraea
Pseudonym: Mrs D. E.
Pseudonym: The Author of The Gamester
Used Form: Mrs Cent-Livre
Used Form: Mrs Centlivre
Used Form: R. M.
Used Form: the author of The Gamester and Love's Contrivance
SC was a versatile professional writer of the early eighteenth century, who used many genres (poetry, letters, possibly journalism), but whose fame rests on her comedies. Of fourteen of these (including adaptations), several held their place in the repertory for a century or more.
Oval mezzotint of Susanna Centlivre by Peter Pelham, after D. Fermin, 1720. She gazes out of the picture to her right, wearing her hair brushed back in soft curls, with a lock falling on her shoulder. Her gown has a deep neckline with some white linen visible. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Jane Wiseman
She was a friend and correspondent of George Farquhar and the future Susanna Centlivre ; the fact that she addressed a poem to Aphra Behn and that Abel Boyer published letters by her may indicate...
Anthologization Jane Wiseman
Also in 1701, before JW 's the play appeared, Abel Boyer included in his Letters of Wit, Politicks and Morality several writings by her: letters (under the name of Daphne) to George Farquhar and...
Anthologization Catharine Trotter
The ascription has been subject to some question, since the formerly accepted birthdate for CT made her only fourteen at the time; the date established by more recent scholarship makes her approaching twenty.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
The volume,...
Friends, Associates Sarah, Lady Piers
SLP was in correspondence with Catharine Trotter from at least 1697 to 1709 (the year after Trotter's marriage). The relationship was warm: when Trotter, now Cockburn, was married and expecting her first child, Piers hoped...
Textual Features Mary Robinson
To demonstrate, as well as arguing for, mental equality, MR learnedly surveys the course of political and literary history. She honours many women writers of the past (Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre as well...
Intertextuality and Influence Clara Reeve
As in Scott's novel, the central characters in this novel have suffered in marriage before gaining their freedom. Frances Darnford has resisted all temptation to be unfaithful to the husband who gambles away their resources...
Textual Features Alexander Pope
The play is remarkable among its other fun for a minor characater, Phoebe Clinket, an unhinged woman poet. She was wrongly identified in Edward Parker 's Key as Anne Finch , a mistake which has...
Wealth and Poverty Mary Pix
Just over a week after MP died, a performance of Susanna Centlivre 's The Busie Body was given for the benefit of her executor (indirectly, therefore, for her family).
Lyons, Paddy, and Fidelis Morgan, editors. Female Playwrights of the Restoration: Five Comedies. J. M. Dent.
xviii
Friends, Associates Mary Pix
MP 's wide circle of friends included her fellow female playwrights Delarivier Manley , Catharine Trotter , and Susanna Centlivre , as well as the poet Sarah Fyge and actresses Elizabeth Barry and Susannah Verbruggen
Textual Production Mary Pix
MP supported Susanna Centlivre in the early stages of the latter's career, and may even have had a hand in her greatest hit, The Busie Body, 1709.
Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago.
414
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Seymour Montague
The third epistle performs the conventional act of praising historical women: the monarchs Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great of Russia for their exercise of power, the French scholar Anne Dacier , and eleven British...
Friends, Associates Delarivier Manley
The early years of Queen Anne 's reign found DM bitterly divided by politics from most of the women she had written and collaborated with: Centlivre , Pix and Trotter , as well as Fyge.
Manley, Delarivier. “Introduction”. New Atalantis, edited by Ros Ballaster, Pickering and Chatto, p. v - xxviii.
xiii
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...
Reception Margaret Holford
The writer of the note which follows this play in The New British Theatre was not sure if it had ever been staged. The note maintained that the play's quality contradicted the common belief that...
Friends, Associates Eliza Haywood
At this point in her life EH entered on literary relationships with Aaron Hill (who, with some gallant condescension, was a good friend to women writers) and his circle. They included Richard Savage (who has...

Timeline

8 July 1709-31 March 1710: The thrice-weekly Female Tatler appeared,...

Women writers item

8 July 1709-31 March 1710

The thrice-weekly Female Tatler appeared, an explicitly woman-centred riposte to the condescending or gender-prejudiced element in Richard Steele 's still-new Tatler.

6 December 1718: Nicholas Rowe, playwright, translator, and...

Writing climate item

6 December 1718

Nicholas Rowe , playwright, translator, and editor of Shakespeare , died after four years in the post of Poet Laureate.

19 May 1720: A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond,...

Women writers item

19 May 1720

A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond , included work by Pope , Prior , William Bond , George Sewell , Susanna Centlivre , Delarivier Manley , Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .

24 April 1769: Kitty Clive gave her farewell performance....

Building item

24 April 1769

Kitty Clive gave her farewell performance. She had enjoyed great success as a comic actress, and some as a playwright.

23 September 1782: Covent Garden Theatre re-opened after a three-month...

Building item

23 September 1782

Covent Garden Theatre re-opened after a three-month reconstruction, enlargement, and renovation.

1994: Juggernaut was set up as a small New York...

Women writers item

1994

Juggernaut was set up as a small New York theatre company; in 2001 it decided to publicise the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women playwrights.

27 October 2009: In Washington, DC, the National Museum of...

Women writers item

27 October 2009

In Washington, DC, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Washington Shakespeare Company together launched a Sort-of-Jane-Austen Play Reading Festival presenting women playwrights.

Texts

Centlivre, Susanna. A Bickerstaff’s Burying. Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1710.
Centlivre, Susanna. A Bold Stroke for a Wife. W. Mears, J. Browne, and F. Clay, 1718.
Centlivre, Susanna. A Poem. Humbly Presented to His Most Sacred Majesty George. T. Woodward, 1715.
Centlivre, Susanna. A Wife Well Manag’d. Printed and sold by S. Keimer, 1715.
Centlivre, Susanna. A Woman’s Case. E. Curll, 1720.
Centlivre, Susanna. An Epistle to Mrs. Wallup. R. Burleigh and A. Boulter, 1715.
Centlivre, Susanna. An Epistle to the King of Sweden. Printed for J. Roberts . and Arabella Morris, 1717.
Centlivre, Susanna. Love at a Venture. John Chantry, 1706.
Centlivre, Susanna. Love’s Contrivance. Bernard Lintott, 1703.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Artifice. T. Payne, 1723.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Basset Table. Printed for William Turner . and sold by J. Nutt, 1706.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Beau’s Duel. Printed for D. Brown . and N. Cox, 1702.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Busie Body. Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1709.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Cruel Gift. Printed for E. Curl . and A. Bettesworth, 1717.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Gamester. Printed for William Turner . and William Davis, 1705.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Gotham Election. Printed and sold by S. Keimer, 1715.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Man’s Bewitch’d. Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1709.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Masquerade. Bernard Lintott, 1713.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Perjur’d Husband. Bennet Banbury, 1700.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Perplex’d Lovers. Printed for Owen Lloyd, 1712.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Platonick Lady. Printed for James Knapton . . . and Egbert Sanger, 1707.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Stolen Heiress. Printed for William Turner . and John Nutt, 1703.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Wonder. E. Curll, 1714.
Centlivre, Susanna. The Works of the Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre. J. Knapton, 1761.