Edith Craig

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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 She also wrote one unpublished play for children. Her unpublished papers—correspondence, prompt books, and playbills—document her significant contribution to feminist theatre history.
Black and white photograph of Edith Craig, shown from the shoulders up. Her head is leaning against one hand, her light hair is cut short, and she is wearing a black jacket with a white collar and cuffs, over a white shirt with ruffles at the front.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Christopher St John
CSJ 's life was changed when Edith Craig died (after almost fifty years together) at Priest's House, the home they had shared with Tony Atwood.
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
181, 229
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
349
Holledge, Julie. Innocent Flowers: Women in the Edwardian Theatre. Virago.
153
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...
Cultural formation Christopher St John
At some point after CSJ met her long-time partner Edith Craig , she converted from her family's Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism .
Auerbach, Nina. Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time. W.W. Norton.
389
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
250
Cultural formation Christopher St John
She had since childhood, apparently, believed that she ought have been male because of her love for women. According to Ellen Terry's biographer Nina Auerbach : Many lesbians of that period gave themselves men's names...
Friends, Associates Christopher St John
Christabel Marshall (later CSJ ) met the actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edith Craig ; they soon became intimate friends.
Auerbach, Nina. Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time. W.W. Norton.
480
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
Performance of text Vita Sackville-West
VSW gave a reading of The Land at the Barn Theatre at Smallhythe, run by Edith Craig and Christopher St John .
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
251
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
Performance of text Edith Lyttelton
Edith Craig 's Pioneer Players mounted a production of Two Pierrots, EL 's adaptation of Rostand 's play Les deux Pierrots (which has been described as a curtain-raiser), at London's Little Theatre .
Nicoll, Allardyce. English Drama, 1900-1930. Cambridge University Press.
797
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
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.
Performance of text Cicely Hamilton
The premiere of CH 's suffrage drama A Pageant of Great Women, with direction and some collaboration by Edith Craig , was given at the Scala Theatre in London.
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
220
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
82-3
Cockin, Katharine. “Cicely Hamilton’s Warriors: dramatic reinventions of militancy in the British women’s suffrage movement”. Women’s History Review, Vol.
14
, No. 3/4, pp. 527-42.
529
Performance of text Cicely Hamilton
CH 's performance piece known as The Anti-Suffrage Waxworks was taken on tour by Edith Craig for the Actresses' Franchise League .
Demastes, William W., and Katherine E. Kelly, editors. British Playwrights, 1880-1956. Greenwood Press.
193
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
100
Performance of text Cicely Hamilton
Jack and Jill and a Friend, CH 's comic drama about the difficulties of being a woman writer, was performed by the Pioneer Players at the Kingsway Theatre in London, directed by Edith Craig .
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
221
Whitelaw, Lis. The Life and Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton. Women’s Press.
124-5
Leisure and Society Cicely Hamilton
A striking photographic portrait of CH by Lena Connell , taken in 1912, is now in the National Portrait Gallery .
Williams, Val, and Susan Bright. How We Are: Photographing Britain. Tate Publishing.
78
Connell also photographed other theatre notables such as Edith Craig .

Timeline

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Texts

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