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.
Although written for young people, this is a powerful critique of the Romantic (and gendered) concept of genius. It opens as Mrs Lewis is being blamed as the cruel controller of Genius she could not...
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...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Robins
This book reflects ER
's interest in eugenics, intermarriage, and suicide. Its emphasis on heredity made several reviewers note Ibsen
's influence.
John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862-1952. Routledge.
41-3
Textual Features
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The script uses narrative by Gilot
in voice-over to supplement its dramatic settings and tense encounters between people.
Long, Robert Emmet. The Films of Merchant Ivory. Harry N. Abrams.
247
The film as a whole is disturbing in rather the way that Jefferson is and that...
Textual Features
Githa Sowerby
The play reflects the prevalent influence of Ibsen
in the British drama of this time, not only in its realist approach to social and ethical problems but also in its stifling atmosphere and oppressive Northern...
Textual Features
A. S. Byatt
Here the first-person male narrator, a tiny dwarf-like man named Phineas Gilbert Nanson, on impulse abandons his work towards a PhD in English (Byatt skewers a gallery of predictably eccentric and pretentious academics), rejecting poststructural...
Reception
Willa Cather
WC
's friend Zoë Akins
perceived a kinship between this work and Ibsen
's The Master Builder while she was still reading it; Cather agreed, but added that she thought the later part of her...
Publishing
Henry Handel Richardson
She apparently began to write for a readership after giving up the aim of a musical career, by producing contributions for an unnamed friend's manuscript magazine. Her first attempt was Christmas in Australia, an...
Publishing
Mary Angela Dickens
All the Year Round serialized several other of MAD
's novels. In A Valiant Ignorance, serialized between January and August 1893, she explores family dynamics, with a mother anxious about the consequences of her...
Performance of text
Sir J. M. Barrie
It had been preceded by Bandelero the Bandit, a brief, unpublished sketch written and performed when Barrie was a student in Edinburgh, and belonged to the same time as Ibsen
's Ghost...
Performance of text
George Bernard Shaw
The Theatre Royal
in South Shields gave the first performance of Candida, GBS
's response to Ibsen
's A Doll's House, in which he premised that in the real typical doll's house it...
Performance of text
Katherine Mansfield
The literary house-party at Garsington performed KM
's The Laurels, a kind of Ibsen
-Russian play
Alpers, Antony. The Life of Katherine Mansfield. Oxford University Press.
Alpers, Antony. The Life of Katherine Mansfield. Oxford University Press.
227
Performance of text
Pam Gems
PG
's adaptation of Ibsen
's A Doll's House was first performed at Tyne Wear Theatre
in Newcastle.
Aston, Elaine. “Pam Gems: Body Politics and Biography”. The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, edited by Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, Cambridge University Press, pp. 157-73.
171
Other Life Event
Ella Hepworth Dixon
EHD
helped William Heinemann
, William Archer
, and Elizabeth Robins
put on a reading of Ibsen'sJohn Gabriel Borkman in London for copyright purposes. She played a small part, which she read in German...
Occupation
Elizabeth Robins
ER
attended the first London production of Ibsen
's A Doll's House, which she described as [r]emarkable and thrilling.
John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862-1952. Routledge.