ABSTRACT
Hannah Cowley (1743–1809) was one of the most produced and celebrated playwrights in London at the end of the eighteenth century. She experimented with a range of genres, including tragedy, farce, and pantomime, but achieved success particularly for her comedies. Her reputation extended well into the nineteenth century, with performances throughout the country, in Europe, and in America. She used the addresses, advertisements, and prefaces to her plays not only to advance her theories of dramatic writing but also to assert women's artistic rights, to attack her critics, and address her political concerns. Still she remains an enigma, using double messages to seem simultaneously conventional and progressive about the rights of women, especially women artists.
