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Edith Craig
-
Standard Name: Craig, Edith
Birth Name: Ailsa Edith Geraldine Craig
Nickname: Edy
Self-constructed Name: Ailsa Craig
EC
was primarily a theatre practitioner, known chiefly for her Pioneer Players
, the women's theatre company she founded in 1911. Her literary output was scant. She published a handful of articles on stagecraft, and contributed to a revised edition of her mother Ellen Terry
's memoirs. She also wrote one unpublished play for children. Her unpublished papers—correspondence, prompt books, and playbills—document her significant contribution to feminist theatre history.
Connections
| Connections Sort ascending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Textual Production | Christopher St John | CSJ
gave her love journal, The Golden Book, to Edith Craig
; it depicted some of her more intimate feelings for Craig. Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 24, 71 |
| Textual Production | Christopher St John | CSJ
wrote a biographical introduction to Edy: Recollections of Edith Craig, edited by Eleanor Adlard
. The University of Alberta
Library copy contains a handwritten note from CSJ
that reads: To Christopher Wood
In... |
| Textual Production | George Paston | GP
's Clothes and the Woman: A Comedy in Three Acts was first produced by the Pioneers
at the Imperial Theatre
. These Pioneers are not the same group as Edith Craig
's feminist Pioneer Players
. Nicoll, Allardyce. English Drama, 1900-1930. Cambridge University Press. 875 Kaplan, Joel H., and Sheila Stowell. Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes. Cambridge University Press. 164 |
| Textual Production | Clemence Dane | Thorndike and her husband Lewis Casson
, who had been in other plays by CD
, both appeared in this drama set in a home for the elderly. The character of Blanche Carroll was based... |
| Textual Production | Christopher St John | The Theatre of the Soul's greatest innovations on the English stage lay in its representation of female desire through the character of a female dancer and in the use of innovative stage lighting techniques... |
| Textual Features | Cicely Hamilton | The pageant required more than fifty actresses, only three of whom had speaking parts, to portray famous women from history (not all of them remembered today). In the initial, Scala production, the only speaking role... |
| Textual Features | Christopher St John | This thinly disguised autobiographical fiction (both roman à clef and bildungsroman) depicts a lesbian or invert relationship at a time when public attention to unorthodox sexual relationships (following such attention by sexologists), was on the... |
| Residence | Christopher St John | After leaving 7 Smith Square, CSJ
and Edith Craig
moved to Adelphi Terrace House. Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 61-2 |
| Residence | Christopher St John | |
| Residence | Christopher St John | CSJ
and Edith Craig
rented a residence in London, a third-floor flat at 31 Bedford Street, Covent Garden; this flat became a refuge for suffragists just out of prison or wanted by police. Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 81 Holledge, Julie. Innocent Flowers: Women in the Edwardian Theatre. Virago. 121-2 Auerbach, Nina. Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time. W.W. Norton. 407 |
| Reception | Cicely Hamilton | The play was both a critical success and enormously popular, though some trade papers attacked it as being propagandist. Whitelaw, Lis. The Life and Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton. Women’s Press. 88 |
| Publishing | Charlotte Despard | This was one of the earliest publications of the International Suffrage Shop
, established the same year by Sime Seruya
in the London home of St John and Edith Craig
. It had already appeared... |
| politics | Christopher St John | Sime Seruya
established the International Suffrage Shop
as a feminist publisher and bookseller; it operated out of CSJ
and Edith Craig
's home in Bedford Street. Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell. 87 |
| Performance of text | Cicely Hamilton | Later that year it toured provincial suffrage societies for the Actresses' Franchise League
, under the direction of Edith Craig
. It eventually became a staple piece for Craig's Pioneer Players
. |
| Performance of text | Constance Holme | CH
's dialect play The Home of Vision (one of her only two dramatic pieces to be performed in London over the course of her career) was acted by Edith Craig
's Pioneer Players
. Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford. |
Timeline
June 1908: The Women Writers' Suffrage League was established...
National or international item
June 1908
23 July 1910: A march in London was held in support of...
Building item
23 July 1910
A march in London was held in support of the Conciliation Bill; originally proposed by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
, it was eventually taken over by the Women's Social and Political Union
.
June 1925: The Independent Labour Party founded an Arts...
Writing climate item
June 1925
The Independent Labour Party
founded an Arts Guild
to promote socialist drama and performance.
December 1927: Three months after the dancer Isadora Duncan...
Building item
December 1927
Three months after the dancer Isadora Duncan
died at nearly fifty, as melodramatically as she had lived, her autobiography, My Life, appeared from the new publishing firm Gollancz
. It became an immediate best-seller...
Texts
Terry, Ellen. “Preface; Biographical Chapters”. Ellen Terry’s Memoirs, edited by Edith Craig and Christopher St John, Benjamin Blom, 1969, pp. v - xi; 279.