Susanna Centlivre

20 November 1669 - 01 December 1723

Standard Name: Centlivre, Susanna

Birth Name: Susanna Freeman

Married Name: Susanna Rawkins

Married Name: Susanna Carroll

Married Name: Susanna Centlivre

Married Name: Susanna Ustick

Married Name: Susanna Fox

Pseudonym: Astraea

Pseudonym: Mrs D. E.

Pseudonym: The Author of The Gamester

Used Form: Mrs Cent-Livre

Used Form: Mrs Centlivre

Used Form: R. M.

Used Form: the author of The Gamester and Love's Contrivance

SC was a versatile professional writer of the early eighteenth century, who used many genres (poetry, letters, possibly journalism), but whose fame rests on her comedies. Of fourteen of these (including adaptations), several held their place in the repertory for a century or more.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Anthologization	Catharine Trotter	The ascription has been subject to some question, since the formerly accepted birthdate for CT made her only fourteen at the time; the date established by more recent scholarship makes her approaching twenty. Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The volume,...
Anthologization	Martha Fowke	Five poems by MF (as Mrs. Fowke) appeared in good poetic company (with Pope , Prior , Susanna Centlivre , Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , and others) in Anthony Hammond 's A New Miscellany, published on 19 May 1720.
Anthologization	Jane Wiseman	Also in 1701, before JW 's the play appeared, Abel Boyer included in his Letters of Wit, Politicks and Morality several writings by her: letters (under the name of Daphne) to George Farquhar and...
Education	Elizabeth Boyd	EB says nothing about how she learned the things she knew—an acquaintance with English literature, some history, and at least a smattering of French and Latin—but she may well have been largely self-taught. She often...
Friends, Associates	Sarah, Lady Piers	SLP was in correspondence with Catharine Trotter from at least 1697 to 1709 (the year after Trotter's marriage). The relationship was warm: when Trotter, now Cockburn, was married and expecting her first child, Piers hoped...
Friends, Associates	Mary Pix	MP 's wide circle of friends included her fellow female playwrights Delarivier Manley , Catharine Trotter , and Susanna Centlivre , as well as the poet Sarah Fyge and actresses Elizabeth Barry and Susannah Verbruggen
Friends, Associates	Jane Wiseman	She was a friend and correspondent of George Farquhar and the future Susanna Centlivre ; the fact that she addressed a poem to Aphra Behn and that Abel Boyer published letters by her may indicate...
Friends, Associates	Eliza Haywood	At this point in her life EH entered on literary relationships with Aaron Hill (who, with some gallant condescension, was a good friend to women writers) and his circle. They included Richard Savage (who has...
Friends, Associates	Delarivier Manley	The early years of Queen Anne 's reign found DM bitterly divided by politics from most of the women she had written and collaborated with: Centlivre , Pix and Trotter , as well as Fyge. Manley, Delarivier. “Introduction”. New Atalantis, edited by Ros Ballaster, Pickering and Chatto, 1991, p. v - xxviii. xiii
Intertextuality and Influence	Hannah Cowley	The action is set in Madrid. The title reverses the gender roles of Susanna Centlivre 's A Bold Stroke for a Wife. Of the paired heroines, Victoria reclaims her faithless husband, Carlos, by...
Intertextuality and Influence	Clara Reeve	As in Scott's novel, the central characters in this novel have suffered in marriage before gaining their freedom. Frances Darnford has resisted all temptation to be unfaithful to the husband who gambles away their resources...
Intertextuality and Influence	Frances Burney	This novel adopts the point of view of an omniscient, often moralising, narrator. Its language has been often criticised as Johnson ian. It has in fact little in common with Johnson's style, though it betrays...
Intertextuality and Influence	Hannah Cowley	A prologue refers to the chivalric ages, when nobody criticised women except men of learning who were unequal to fighting with their own sex. Today, it observes, such criticism is more widespread. The play's satire...
Literary responses	Hannah Cowley	The Critical called The Belle's Stratagemthe best dramatic production of a female pen which has appeared since the days of Centlivre , to whom Mrs. Cowley is at least equal in fable and character...
Literary responses	Hannah Cowley	Anna Seward included HC among her seven celebrated Female Poets Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers. 59 (1789): 292 of the present day in April 1789. Recent critical comment on her includes an examination of her use of marriage law in...

Timeline

8 July 1709-31 March 1710

The thrice-weekly Female Tatler appeared, an explicitly woman-centred riposte to the condescending or gender-prejudiced element in Richard Steele 's still-new Tatler.

6 December 1718

Nicholas Rowe , playwright, translator, and editor of Shakespeare , died after four years in the post of Poet Laureate.

19 May 1720

A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond , included work by Pope , Prior , William Bond , George Sewell , Susanna Centlivre , Delarivier Manley , Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .

24 April 1769

Kitty Clive gave her farewell performance. She had enjoyed great success as a comic actress, and some as a playwright.

23 September 1782

Covent Garden Theatre re-opened after a three-month reconstruction, enlargement, and renovation.

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.

27 October 2009

In Washington, DC, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Washington Shakespeare Company together launched a Sort-of-Jane-Austen Play Reading Festival presenting women playwrights.