Hannah Cowley

Hannah Cowley 1743-1809, English poet and dramatist. One of the Della-Cruscans , she contributed under the name Alma Matilda sentimental verse to the World. Her most successful comedy was The Belle's Stratagem (produced in 1780).

Cowley, Hannah, née Parkhouse (1743–1809), wrote a number of comedies including The Runaway (1776), A Bold Stroke for a Husband (1783), and her most successful, The Belle's Stratagem, performed 1780. They tend to preach the importance of marriage and the domestic virtues. She also wrote long narrative romances, and corresponded as ‘Anna Matilda’ in poetry in The World with Robert Merry (see Della Cruscans), a correspondence satirized by Gifford.

Cowley, Hannah [née Parkhouse] (1743–1809), English playwright, whose works mark the transition from Restoration comedy to the 18th-century comedy of manners. Her first play The Runaway (1776) was said to have been ‘improved’ by Garrick, who produced it at Drury Lane. The most successful was The Belle's Stratagem (1780), based on Destouches's La Fausse Agnès (1759). First produced at Covent Garden with Mrs Jordan as Letitia, it was many times revived, notably by Henry Irving in 1881 with himself as Doricourt and Ellen Terry as Letitia. It was one of the first English comedies to be seen in the New World, being in the repertory of the Hallams and Hodgkinson in New York in 1794. Mrs Cowley's later plays, which included Which is the Man? (1782), A Bold Stroke for a Husband (1783), and The Town before You (1794), were all given their first productions at Covent Garden.