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.
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...
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, 2007.
12, 22
He became a particularly agile entrepreneur with a nose for new market niches and an...
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...
Reception
Aphra Behn
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...
Textual Features
Alexander Pope
The play is remarkable among its other fun for a minor characater, Phoebe Clinket, an unhinged woman poet. She was wrongly identified in Edward Parker
's Key as Anne Finch
, a mistake which has...
Textual Features
May Crommelin
The story opens as Irene Ronaldson receives the news that she has inherited a fortune of twenty thousand pounds a year.
“May Crommelin (Maria Henriette de la Cherois-Crommelin) (1849 - 1930)”. Crommelin Family, The Netherlands.
Irene is an orphan: her father lost everything in a bank crash, went out...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Inchbald
EI
did not choose the plays herself. Shakespeare fills the first five volumes, apart from one piece by Ben Jonson
, and five of her own plays fill volume 20. The eighteenth century is better...
Textual Features
Jane Austen
The plot of this novel is a version of a romance archetype: poor but deserving girl confounds all expectations by marrying up. Elizabeth Bennet is the quintessence of the witty and resourceful heroine who had...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Boyd
EB
offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre
(her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood
(though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn
, and Delarivier Manley
, whom she calls the...
Textual Features
Mary Robinson
To demonstrate, as well as arguing for, mental equality, MR
learnedly surveys the course of political and literary history. She honours many women writers of the past (Aphra Behn
and Susanna Centlivre
as well...
Textual Production
Mary Pix
MP
supported Susanna Centlivre
in the early stages of the latter's career, and may even have had a hand in her greatest hit, The Busie Body, 1709.
Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago, 1988.
414
Textual Production
Clemence Dane
The tale of Covent Garden begins with Inigo Jones
's building there in the 1630s of the first London square, prototype for many more. CD
throws together a colourful account of its local characters and...
Textual Production
Mary Davys
MD
may have written An Answer from the King of Sweden
to the British Lady's Epistle, in response to a poem by Susanna Centlivre
.
Bowden, Martha F., and Mary Davys. “Introduction”. The Reform’d Coquet; or, Memoirs of Amoranda; Familiar Letters Betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady; and, The Accomplish’d Rake; or, Modern Fine Gentleman, University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. ix - xlix.
xx
Textual Production
Sarah Fyge
SF
published her Poems on Several Occasions, with prefatory verses probably by Mary Pix
and Susanna Centlivre
.
Foxon, David F. English Verse 1701-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1975, 2 vols.
Bowyer, John Wilson. The Celebrated Mrs Centlivre. Duke University Press, 1952.
31-2
Textual Production
Sarah Gardner
The sub-title repeats and reverses the title of Susanna Centlivre
's A Bold Stroke for a Wife, 1718. SG
said she wrote this play not from vanity or desire of applause but a view...
