'The Celebrated Hannah Cowley':

Experiments in Dramatic Genre, 1776–1794

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Angela Escott

Gender and Genre

Hannah Cowley (1743–1809) was a successful dramatist, and something of an eighteenth-century celebrity. In her heyday, Cowley’s plays were put on across Europe and America, and the most celebrated actresses of the period – Sarah Siddons, Dora Jordan, Mary Robinson – all acted in them, as did fellow dramatist and actress Elizabeth Inchbald. She was even portrayed disparagingly by Charlotte Smith in two of her novels.

New critical interest in the drama of this period has meant a resurgence of interest in Cowley’s writing and in the performance of her plays. This is the first substantial monograph study to examine Cowley’s life and work. It examines her comedy – the genre in which she made her name – and traces the path of her experimentation with tragedy and alternative ‘illegitimate’ forms. Escott questions how a woman was able to overcome the obstacles of her gender to use existing (and mould developing) genres for her purpose.

Sample pages

• Index
• Introduction

Readership

Theatre Studies, Literature, Eighteenth-Century Studies and Women's Studies

Contents

Introduction
1 ‘Few Better Comedies than Hers’
2 ‘The Thwarted Passions and Lofty Grandeur of Tragedy’: Cowley’s Gothic Drama, Albina
3 Civic Virtue, Despotism and the Fall of Empires in Cowley’s Tragedy, The Fate of Sparta
4 Afterpiece Experiments: Oratory, Pedantry and Politeness
5 The Imperial Project: Resistance and Revolution in Cowley’s Oriental Musical Comedy
6 A Female Sculptor and Connoisseur: Artistic Self-Fashioning and the Exposure of Connoisseurship, Collecting and Concupiscence
Appendix: Chronology of Plays by Hannah Cowley

Related titles

• Acting Theory and the English Stage, 1700–1830
• British Satire, 1785–1840
• Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism
• Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights
• Elizabeth Inchbald's Reputation: A Publishing and Reception History
• The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald
• The Works of Charlotte Smith
• Women's Theatrical Memoirs

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