Cicely Hamilton

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Cicely Hamilton 1907

Cicely M. Hamilton (born Hammill, born June 15, 1872 in Paddington (London) , † December 6, 1952 in Portugal ) was a British actress, author, journalist, suffragette and feminist. Her play How the Vote Was Won is well known , in which a male opponent of the suffragettes changes his mind when the women in his life go on strike. Hamilton is also the author of A Peagent of Great Women (1909), one of the most frequently played plays about the suffragettes, in which the character of Jane Austen was assigned to the group "The Learned Women" (the learned women).

Life

Cicely Hammill was born in 1872 as the eldest of four children. Her father was Denzil Hammill, her mother Maude Mary Piers. When her mother disappeared, 10-year-old Cicely was raised by foster parents. She initially trained as a teacher in Malvern , Worcestershire , but then joined a traveling theater company. Out of consideration for her family, she adopted the pseudonym "Cicely Hamilton". In 1897 she joined the Shakespeare theater company, which was directed by the American actor Conway Tearle . She played Gertrude in Hamlet, Emilia in Othello and was one of the witches in Macbeth. Hammill received special praise for her role in Fanny's First Play (Original: Fanny's First Play) by George Bernard Shaw .

Cicely Hamilton also wrote plays on feminist themes and had some success.

In 1908 she and Bessie Hatton founded the Women Writer's Suffrage League, which had 400 members. To her belong u. a. Ivy Compton-Burnett , Sarah Grand, Violet Hunt , Marie Belloc Lowndes , Alice Meynell , Olive Schreiner , Evelyn Sharp, May Sinclair, and Margaret L. Woods, but they also had many prominent male supporters. They produced literature for the fight for women's rights.

Cicely Hamilton provided the text for The March of the Women , which Ethel Smyth composed in 1910 for the Women's Social and Political Union .

In times without radio, short plays were an effective way of getting a political message across and discussing it. These plays have been performed across the UK. This is how the Suffrage drama was invented. Votes for Women by Elizabeth Robins and Cicely Hamilton and How the Vote Was Won by Christopher St. John's are two important examples. In 1910 Hamilton wrote A Pageant of Great Women , a very successful suffragette play. Her friend, theater director Edith Craig, came up with the idea. Hamilton played the woman in the play, while Craig played the animal painter Rosa Bonheur , one of the 50 or so famous women in the play. The play was performed across Great Britain from 1909 until World War I. Cicely Hamilton was a member of Craig's theater company, the Pioneer Players . Their play Jack and Jill and a Friend was performed by the troupe in 1911.

During the First World War , Hamilton first worked in the British Organization for Nurses and then joined the Army as an auxiliary. She later formed a theater company to entertain the troops.

After the war she wrote as a freelance journalist, specifically on the subject of birth control. Hamilton wrote regularly for Time and Time magazines. She was an active member of the feminist Six Point Group . And she worked as a playwright for the Birmingham Repertory Company .

In 1922 Hamilton wrote Theodore Savage (1928 Lest Ye Die ), a science fiction novel about a war-ravaged Britain.

Since 1938 she received a civil list pension .

In July 2017, the Finborough Theater played Hamilton's Just to Get Married as the first London theater in 100 years. It received positive reviews from The Times , The Observer , the Evening Standard, and The New York Times .

Works

Probably 'A Pageant of Great Women' with the Actress Franchise League

Plays

  • The Traveler Returns (1906)
  • Diana of Dobson's (1908)
  • How the Vote was Won (1909)
  • A Pageant of Great Women (1910)
  • Just to Get Married (1911)
  • Jack and Jill and a Friend (1911)
  • The Child in Flanders: A Nativity Play (1922)
  • The Old Adam (1924)
  • The Beggar Prince (1944)

Novels, literature

  • Women's Votes (1908)
  • Marriage as a Trade (1909)
  • William - an Englishman (1920) ( Persephone Books 1999)
  • Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future (1922)
  • Non-Combatant (1924)
  • The Human Factor (1925)
  • The Old Vic (1926) with Lilian Baylis
  • Read Ye Die (1928)
  • Modern Germanies, as seen by an Englishwoman (1931) (An Englishwoman discovers Germany, Stuttgart 1932)
  • Modern Italy, as seen by an Englishwoman (1932)
  • Modern France, as seen by an Englishwoman (1933)
  • Little Arthur's History of the Twentieth Century (1933)
  • Modern Russia, as seen by an Englishwoman (1934)
  • Modern Austria, as seen by an Englishwoman (1935)
  • Life Errant (1935) (autobiography)
  • Modern Ireland, as seen by an Englishwoman (1936)
  • Modern Scotland, as seen by an Englishwoman (1937)
  • Modern England, as seen by an Englishwoman (1938)
  • Modern Sweden, as seen by an Englishwoman (1939)
  • The Englishwoman (1940)
  • Lament for Democracy (1940)
  • Holland To-day (1950)

literature

  • Everett F. Bleiler: The Checklist of Fantastic Literature . Shasta Publishers , Chicago 1948, pp. 112 (English).
  • Lis Whitelaw: The Life & Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton, 1990.
  • Sean Moran: The Stage Career of Cicely Hamilton (1895-1914) , Frankfurt 2017, ISBN 978-3-653-07126-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cicely Hamilton, Independent Feminist . In: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies . tape 11 , no. 2/3 , 1990.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Lisa Shariari: Hamilton, Cicely . In: Faye Hammill, Ashlie Sponenberg and Esme Miskimmin (Eds.): Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing, 1900-1950 . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2006, ISBN 978-1-4039-1692-1 , pp. 105 f .
  3. ↑ Devoney Looser: The Making of Jane Austen . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2017, ISBN 1-4214-2282-4 , pp. 169 .
  4. ^ Cicely Hamilton. Retrieved April 24, 2019 .
  5. ^ Jory Bennett: The Memoirs of Ethel Smyth: Abridged and Introduced by Ronald Crichton, with a list of works by Jory Bennett . Ed .: Ronald Crichton. Viking, Harmondsworth 1987, ISBN 0-670-80655-2 , pp. 378 (English).
  6. ↑ Maroula Joannou and June Purvis: The Women's Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives . Manchester University Press, Manchester 1998, pp. 127 .
  7. ↑ Katharine Cockin: Edith Craig (1869-1947) . In: Dramatic Lives . Cassell, London 1998, ISBN 0-304-33645-9 .
  8. ↑ Katharine cockin: Women and Theater in the Age of Suffrage: The Pioneer Players 1911-25 . Palgrave, Basingstoke 2001.
  9. ^ Anne Logan: Feminism and criminal justice: a historical perspective . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-230-58413-6 , pp. 24 f .
  10. ^ EF Bleiler and Richard Bleiler. Science fiction: The Early Years. Kent State University Press: Science Fiction: The Early Years . Kent State University Press, Kent 1990, ISBN 0-87338-416-4 , pp. 331 .
  11. ↑ Ann Treneman: Theater review: Just to Get Married at the Finborough Theater, SW10 . In: The Times . August 1, 2017, ISSN  0140-0460 ( thetimes.co.uk [accessed April 27, 2019]).
  12. ^ Susannah Clapp: Just to Get Married; Road review - fire and anxiety . In: The Observer . August 6, 2017, ISSN  0029-7712 ( theguardian.com [accessed April 27, 2019]).
  13. ↑ Just to Get Married review: Catch this now or risk waiting a century. July 31, 2017, accessed April 24, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Ben Brantley: Women Without Options and Spoiled for Choice . In: The New York Times . August 7, 2017, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 27, 2019]).
personal data
SURNAME Hamilton, Cicely
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hamilton, Cicely M .; Hamilton, Cicely Mary; Hammill, Cicely
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Paddington (London)
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1952
Place of death Portugal (unsure)