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
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, 1973–1993.
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...
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, 1997.
27-8
Reception Hannah More
Hannah Cowley (still fairly fresh from her initial stage success, and currently waiting for her long-delayed tragedy, Albina, to be staged) suspected More of plagiarising from her, or the theatre managers who held her...
Textual Features Leah Sumbel
Another of its features was the exchange of Della Cruscan verse between Robert Merry and Hannah Cowley , and because of Merry's friendship with Hester Lynch Piozzi , Piozzi's movements were advertised in The World.
Jenkins, Annibel. “The World and All the People in It: London, 1787-1789”. Boundaries, Margins and Frames: Ways of Seeing and Knowing the Eighteenth Century: Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, 1 Mar. 2002.
Textual Features Charlotte Smith
In this book the ancient and imposing but crumbling manor house is an emblem of English society as a whole: a trope which was to be popular with later novelists. The downtrodden orphan heroine, Monimia...
Textual Features Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
In the society that Morgan depicts, the Irish Catholic gentry are mostly absent, scattered in European exile. The peasantry, dirt-poor but generous-hearted, include Tim O'Leary, schoolmaster of a hedge school, scholar and expert in Irish...
Textual Features Mary Robinson
The poems include an Ode to Genius (which implicitly claims that status), Petrarch to Laura (which woos a woman in a male voice), and a piece responding to Hannah Cowley 's expression of disbelief that...
Textual Features Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The title of the Blackstick Papers alludes to the character of the Fairy Blackstick from her father 's Rose and the Ring: she places her essays under the kindly tutelage
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Blackstick Papers. Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
3-4
of this spirit...
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...
Textual Production Anna Jane Vardill
For her first few years of appearing there, AJV was almost the only woman in the longish list of poetry contributors to the European Magazine (although over the magazine's lifetime the eleven women who published...
Textual Production Jean Marishall
Years later JM published her vivid account of her struggles to get this novel published. She began writing because she thought (like Hannah Cowley a few years later) that she could do better than what...
Textual Production Leah Sumbel
It is often said (for instance by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) that Topham's main aim in this venture was to boost her career. The World was known for featuring personal attacks on...
Textual Production Mary Russell Mitford
MRM wrote her first attempt, Fiesco, in early 1821, inspired (like Hannah Cowley ) by seeing a mediocre tragedy which she felt she could outdo.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
1: 354, 356
Rejected by Macready , it survives...
Textual Production Hannah More
HM probably gave up the theatre (both writing for it and attending plays) less because of the loss of David Garrick or the conflict with Hannah Cowley than because of her religious belief, which presented...

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