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
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...
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 Susanna Centlivre
Hannah Cowley borrowed the subplot for Who's the Dupe?, 1779.
Bowyer, John Wilson. The Celebrated Mrs Centlivre. Duke University Press, 1952.
50
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 Sarah Wentworth Morton
In this volume Lines Addressed to the inimitable Author of the Poems under the signature of Della Crusca and others addressed to Alfred (who may have been her fellow-poet and warm admirer Robert Treat Payne, Jr
Intertextuality and Influence Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
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...
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
qtd. in
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7, Dec. 2001.
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...
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, 2008.
111
The Monthly Review...
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 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,...
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...

Timeline

April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...

Women writers item

April 1789

The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward 's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
59 (1789): 292

1791: William Gifford, in his satire The Baviad,...

Writing climate item

1791

William Gifford , in his satire The Baviad, became the first to attack the Della Cruscan body of poetry which notably included work by Robert Merry and Hannah Cowley .
McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style. Clarendon, 1996.
74ff

11 October 1819: The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, owned...

Building item

11 October 1819

The Theatre Royal , Bury St Edmunds, owned by its architect, William Wilkins , opened as a state-of-the-art modern theatre.
Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal. http://www.theatreroyal.org/.
Kuti, Elizabeth. Email to Orlando about conference, 19 April 2010.

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.
Goreau, Angeline. “These Women Seduced By Wit”. New York Times, 9 Mar. 2003, p. Section 2: 7.

Texts

Cowley, Hannah. A Bold Stroke for a Husband. T. Evans.
Cowley, Hannah. A Day in Turkey. G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
Cowley, Hannah. A School for Greybeards. G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
Cowley, Hannah. Albina, Countess Raimond. J. Dodsley.
Cowley, Hannah, and William Hutchinson. “Edwina. A Poem”. The History of the County of Cumberland, Vol.
2
, F. Jollie, 1794, pp. 5-15.
Link, Frederick M., and Hannah Cowley. “Introduction”. The Plays of Hannah Cowley, Vol.
1
, Garland, 1979, p. v - xlxx.
Cowley, Hannah. More Ways Than One. T. Evans.
Cowley, Hannah. The Belle’s Stratagem. T. Cadell.
Cowley, Hannah. The Fate of Sparta. G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
Cowley, Hannah. The Italian Marauders. Printed by J. Dean for George Hughes, 1810, 4 vols.
Cowley, Hannah. The Maid of Arragon; A Tale. L. Davis.
Cowley, Hannah. The Plays of Hannah Cowley. Editor Link, Frederick M., Garland, 1979.
Cowley, Hannah. The Poetry of Anna Matilda. John Bell, 1788.
Cowley, Hannah. The Runaway. Printed for the author.
Cowley, Hannah. The Scottish Village. G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
Cowley, Hannah. The Siege of Acre. J. Debrett, 1801.
Cowley, Hannah. The Town Before You. T. N. Longman.
Cowley, Hannah. The Works of Mrs. Cowley: Dramas and Poems. Wilkie and Robinson, 1813, 3 vols.
Cowley, Hannah. Which Is the Man?. C. Dilly, 1782.
Cowley, Hannah. Who’s the Dupe?. J. Dodsley.