Jane Wiseman
Jane Holt (née Wiseman; March 1673 – after 1717)[1] was a British poet and playwright, notable for being the first self-educated labouring-class woman to have a play professionally produced in London.[2]
Wiseman was possibly born in Holborn. She seems to have been from a modest labouring-class background and self-taught and she worked as a servant, but very little else is known about her. Her one play, Antiochus the Great, or, The Fatal Relapse, was successfully produced at the New Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in , and revived as late as 1721.[3] It was one of forty or so plays by women produced in London between 1695 and 1723, and is notable for its emphasis on female friendship.[4] She was part of a literary group with Susannah Centlivre, with whom she was friends, as well as George Farquhar, Abel Boyer, Ned Ward, and Tom Brown.[5]
She is thought to have been the "Mrs Holt" whose collection of occasional and friendship poems, A Fairy Tale Inscrib'd, to the Honourable Mrs. W—, with other Poems, was published in 1717.[6]
Wiseman took the proceeds from her success with Antiochus the Great and bought a tavern in Westminster for herself and her husband.[6]
Etexts
- Wiseman, Jane. Antiochus the Great, or, The Fatal Relapse (1701). Rpt. in Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne Ed. and Intro. Kendall. London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 113—153. (Free with registration at the Internet Archive)
See also
References
- ^ Jane Wiseman at the Orlando Project, Cambridge University Press
- ^ Kendall. "Jane Wiseman". Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 114—117. (Internet Archive)
- ^ Pearson, Jacqueline. The prostituted muse. Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 235. (Internet Archive)
- ^ Kendall. Intro. Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 9—12. (Internet Archive)
- ^ Anon. Letters of Wit, Politicks and Morality. (London, 1701, p. 21.), cited by Kendall. "Jane Wiseman". Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne London: Methuen, 1988, p. 114. (Internet Archive)
- ^ a b Christmas, William J. “Holt , Jane (fl. c.1682–1717).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Accessed 23 July 2022.
External links
- Works by or about Jane Wiseman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Articles with short description
- Use dmy dates from April 2020
- AC with 0 elements
- 1673 births
- Year of birth uncertain
- Year of death unknown
- 18th-century British women writers
- 18th-century British dramatists and playwrights
- 18th-century English poets
- British women dramatists and playwrights
- English dramatists and playwrights
- English women poets
- 18th-century English women
- 18th-century English people
- All stub articles
- English writer stubs
- British dramatist and playwright stubs
- United Kingdom theatre stubs