ABSTRACT
226 227In her chapter on “Women Pioneers” in Feminism and Theatre, SueEllen Case comments on the lack of biographical information available for pre-twentieth-century women writers and concludes that “the invisibility of their biographies suppresses valuable knowledge about the experience and models of women in theatre. Though ‘firsts seem to be important in dominant histories, ‘first women’ do not” (44). Such sentiments are especially resonant in the case of Elizabeth Polack, the first Jewish woman melodramatist in England.
