ABSTRACT
The Routledge Anthology of British Women Playwrights, 1777–1843 makes available in print a collection of dramatic writing by women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. No other anthology provides a comparable range of women’s dramatic writing, performed and unperformed, from the years between 1777 and 1843. This volume provides an eclectic mix of texts that were published and unpublished, staged and unstaged in order to stimulate the rich classroom discussion of women, writing, and theatre history that women’s dramatic writing in this era deserves. The selections included here invite teachers and their students to study particular works by authors of note, but also to consider the differences between works written for page and stage. We include plays by successful playwrights of the legitimate theatre of the era (Cowley, Inchbald, Mitford, Gore) alongside those of writers who were not highly successful on the legitimate stage but who either established a reputation with the public through publication (Baillie) or succeeded while working apart from London’s major theatres (Scott, Brand). Other authors included earned their reputations in other genres but wrote dramas of interest (More, Opie, Burney) that can enrich our understanding of women’s novels and educational writing. While many of the plays included are recognizable as published dramas, we have chosen to place these alongside textual artifacts that suggest plays or theatrical events of which no definitive record exists. Our anthology invites teachers to engage their students in studying the variety of women’s dramatic writing in this era.
