Elizabeth Baker

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Standard Name: Baker, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Baker
Married Name: Elizabeth Allaway
Elizabeth Baker 's drama often deals with feminist and economic issues facing struggling middle-class families. Her casts of characters include feisty, independent young women seeking emancipation and sympathetic men burdened with supporting a family on a limited income. Her plays were performed at several important venues during the early twentieth century, including the Court Theatre in London, the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, and BirminghamRepertory Theatre .

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Occupation Inez Bensusan
IB also became involved with a new performance troupe, a Sunday Society called the 1930 Players . This group seems to have kept up some if its earlier suffrage connections by performing such plays as...
Author summary Henrik Ibsen
The plays of Henrik Ibsen , nineteenth-century Norwegian poet and dramatist, were both controversial and enormously influential in Britain; their use of realist techniques to address contemporary social problems helped to bring about a revolution...
Textual Features Githa Sowerby
The play reflects the prevalent influence of Ibsen in the British drama of this time, not only in its realist approach to social and ethical problems but also in its stifling atmosphere and oppressive Northern...
Textual Production Githa Sowerby
She had worked on it during a visit to Sutton Courtenay just before she was married, and finished it in late 1913. Curtis Brown had wanted her to produce something more light-hearted, but several theatre...
Textual Production Githa Sowerby
According to Patricia Riley this play was influenced by Elizabeth Baker 's Chains, which opened on 18 April 1909—but in Baker's play the love between husband and wife is real and deep.
Riley, Patricia. Looking for Githa. New Writing North, 2009.
117

Timeline

June 1908: The Women Writers' Suffrage League was established...

National or international item

June 1908

The Women Writers' Suffrage League was established by Cicely Hamilton and Bessie Hatton .
Norquay, Glenda. Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign. Manchester University Press, 1995.
xv
Stowell, Sheila. A Stage of Their Own. University of Michigan Press, 1992.
2, 40, 102, 126n1
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell, 1998.
89
Whitelaw, Lis. The Life and Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton. Women’s Press, 1990.
68-74
Liggins, Emma. “The ’Sordid Story’ of an Unwanted Child: Militancy, Motherhood, and Abortion in Elizabeth Robins’s Votes for Women and Way Stations”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
25
, No. 3, Aug. 2018, pp. 347-61.
349

Texts

Baker, Elizabeth. Bert’s Girl. Ernest Benn, 1927.
Baker, Elizabeth. Chains. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1910.
Baker, Elizabeth. “Chains”. New Woman Plays, edited by Linda Fitzsimmons and Viv Gardner, Methuen, 1991, pp. 79-131.
Baker, Elizabeth. Cupid in Clapham. S. French, 1927.
Baker, Elizabeth. Edith. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1927.
Baker, Elizabeth. Miss Robinson. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1920.
Baker, Elizabeth. Miss Tassey. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1913.
Baker, Elizabeth. One of the Spicers. Gowans and Gray, 1933.
Baker, Elizabeth. Partnership. S. French, 1921.
Baker, Elizabeth. The Price of Thomas Scott. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1913.