Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Susanna Centlivre
-
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.
Nancy Copeland
has observed in a recent study of Behn, Centlivre
, and gender that adaptations of this play, by Eliza Haywood
in A Wife to be Lett, 1723, and Hannah Cowley
in A...
Reception
Margaret Holford
The writer of the note which follows this play in The New British Theatre was not sure if it had ever been staged. The note maintained that the play's quality contradicted the common belief that...
Occupation
Edmund Curll
Curll was apprenticed sometime around 1697 to 1699, and set up in business for himself by early 1706.
Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Clarendon Press.
12, 22
He became a particularly agile entrepreneur with a nose for new market niches and an...
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...
Literary responses
May Drummond
William Cookworthy
of Plymouth, who heard her speak in 1744, commented on her surprising genius and quick, lively, penetrating comprehension. He called her a great connoisseur of the human heart in all its emotions, passions...
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...
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...
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, p. v - xxviii.
xiii
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...
