Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hannah Cowley
-
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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...
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...
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...
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.
3-4
of this spirit...
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.
13: 35
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...
The title is multiply allusive. Molière's comedy L'école...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susanna Haswell Rowson
In this humorous poem the author draws on her first-hand knowledge, as an actor and singer, with the London stage. She marshals thirty-four of it actors and writers to appear before Apollo, who metes out...
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 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...
