Elizabeth Robins
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth Robins was an actress, playwright
, novelist, and suffragette
.
. After financial difficulties, her father left for Colorado, leaving the children in the care of Hannah. When Hannah was committed to an insane asylum, Elizabeth and the other children were divided up between relatives and Elizabeth was sent to live with her grandmother in Zanesville, Ohio
, where she was educated. Her father was a follower of Robert Owen
and held progressive political views. Because of her intelligence, Elizabeth was one of her father's favorites. He wanted her to attend Vassar College
and study medicine. However, when she was eighteen she ran away to become an actress.
stock company, and afterwards with Edwin Booth
. In 1885 Robins married actor George Richmond Parks. Although her husband struggled to get parts, her own acting career gained momentum and she was soon in great demand. On May 31, 1887, Parks left her a note saying he would 'stay in her light no longer' and committed suicide
. Suffering from grief and guilt Robins relocated to London the following year. Except for extended visits to the U.S. to visit family, she remained in England for the rest of her life. She first appeared in The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1889. Early in her tenure in London, she became enamoured of Ibsen
's plays, starring in Hedda Gabler
, A Doll's House
and The Master Builder
. She soon became known in Britain as "Ibsen's High Priestess." Although she was a gifted actress and she remained one of Britain's most highly respected thespians, her association with Ibsen kept producers from considering her for other roles and limited her acting career. In 1902 she was Lucrezia in Stephen Phillips
's Paolo and Francesca at the St. James's Theatre, London.
, as well as the Women's Social and Political Union
, although she broke with the WPSU over its increasing use of violent militancy. She remained a strong advocate of women's rights, however, and used her gifts as a public speaker and writer on behalf of the cause. In 1907 her book The Convert was published. It was later turned into a play that became synonymous with the suffrage movement. Robins remained an active feminist throughout her life. In the 1920s she was a regular contributor to the feminist magazine, Time and Tide
. She also continued to write books such as Ancilla's Share: An Indictment of Sex Antagonism, which explored the issues of sexual inequality. She collected and edited speeches, lectures, and articles dealing with the women’s movement, some of which had never previously appeared in print (Way Stations, published by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1913).
Robins was involved in the campaign to allow women to enter the House of Lords
. Her friend, Margaret Haig
, was the daughter of Viscount Rhondda
. He was a supporter of women's rights and in his will made arrangements for Margaret to inherit his title. This was considered radical, as women did not normally inherit peerage titles. When Rhondda died in 1918 the House of Lords refused to allow Margaret, now the Viscountess Rhondda, to take her seat. Robins wrote numerous articles on the subject, but the House of Lords refused to change its decision. It was not until 1958 that women were first admitted to the House.
Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence
credited Robins with explaining to him the difference between a suffragette
and a suffragist.
. As a married man Archer was unavailable, however. Except for her brief marriage to George Parks, she remained a fiercely independent single woman. Highly intelligent, she was welcomed into the cream of London's literary and artistic circles, enjoying friendships with George Bernard Shaw
, Oscar Wilde
, and Henry James
, as well as a tempestuous romantic (but probably non-physical) relationship with the much younger future poet laureate John Masefield
.
In 1900 she traveled alone to the gold rush camps of Alaska in search of her favorite brother Raymond Robins
whom she feared was lost in the Yukon. After a long and arduous journey, she located Raymond in Nome. She shared his life in wild and lawless Alaska throughout the summer of 1900. Her adventures were not without cost – the typhoid fever
she contracted at that time compromised her health for the rest of her life. Robins's tales about Alaska provided material for a number of articles she sent on to London for publication. Her best selling book, The Magnetic North, is an account of her experiences, as is The Alaska-Klondike Diary of Elizabeth Robins.
Although she rejected her father's plans to be educated as a doctor, she retained a strong interest in medicine. In 1909 she met Octavia Wilberforce, a young woman whose fervent desire to study medicine was thwarted by a family that felt intellectualism and professional careers were 'unsexing' for women. When Wilberforce's father not only refused to pay for her studies, but disinherited her for pursuing them, Robins and other friends provided financial and moral support until she became a physician. While some have conjectured that Robins and Wilberforce were romantically involved, such insinuation has never been supported by the considerable scholarly material available about both women, nor is it born out in their own copious written material. All evidence points to Robins and Wilberforce enjoying a relationship much like that of mother and daughter. In her declining years she developed a friendship with Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
. Dr Wilberforce, the great-granddaughter of William Wilberforce
, the British emancipator of slaves, looked after Robins until her death in 1952, just months shy of her 90th birthday.
The success of this last novel led to her publishing under her own name:
Votes for Women! (A suffrage play produced at he Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London), 1907.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, novelist, and suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
.
Early life
Elizabeth Robins, the first child of Charles Robins and Hannah Crow, and was born in Louisville, KentuckyLouisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
. After financial difficulties, her father left for Colorado, leaving the children in the care of Hannah. When Hannah was committed to an insane asylum, Elizabeth and the other children were divided up between relatives and Elizabeth was sent to live with her grandmother in Zanesville, Ohio
Zanesville, Ohio
Zanesville is a city in and the county seat of Muskingum County, Ohio, United States. The population was 25,586 at the 2000 census.Zanesville was named after Ebenezer Zane, who had constructed Zane's Trace, a pioneer road through present-day Ohio...
, where she was educated. Her father was a follower of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
and held progressive political views. Because of her intelligence, Elizabeth was one of her father's favorites. He wanted her to attend Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
and study medicine. However, when she was eighteen she ran away to become an actress.
Acting career
She had her early training as an actress with the Boston MuseumBoston Museum (theatre)
The Boston Museum , also called the Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, was a theatre, wax museum, natural history museum, zoo, and art museum in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts...
stock company, and afterwards with Edwin Booth
Edwin Booth
Edwin Thomas Booth was a famous 19th century American actor who toured throughout America and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869 he founded Booth's Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time...
. In 1885 Robins married actor George Richmond Parks. Although her husband struggled to get parts, her own acting career gained momentum and she was soon in great demand. On May 31, 1887, Parks left her a note saying he would 'stay in her light no longer' and committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Suffering from grief and guilt Robins relocated to London the following year. Except for extended visits to the U.S. to visit family, she remained in England for the rest of her life. She first appeared in The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1889. Early in her tenure in London, she became enamoured of Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's plays, starring in Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...
, A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....
and The Master Builder
The Master Builder
The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's most significant and revealing works.-Performance:...
. She soon became known in Britain as "Ibsen's High Priestess." Although she was a gifted actress and she remained one of Britain's most highly respected thespians, her association with Ibsen kept producers from considering her for other roles and limited her acting career. In 1902 she was Lucrezia in Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips was a highly famed English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity in his lifetime....
's Paolo and Francesca at the St. James's Theatre, London.
Writing career
Robins realized her income from acting was not stable enough to carry her. An able writer, she turned to the pen, publishing a number of well-received novels at first under the pseudonym C. E. Raimond. She explained her use of a pseudonym as a means of keeping her acting and writing careers separate but gave it up when the media reported that Robins and Raimond were the same. She enjoyed a long career as a fiction and nonfiction writer. She retired from the stage at the age of 40.Women's rights involvement
She became a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage SocietiesNational Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , also known as the Suffragists was an organisation of women's suffrage societies in the United Kingdom.-Formation and campaigning:...
, as well as the Women's Social and Political Union
Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union was the leading militant organisation campaigning for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom...
, although she broke with the WPSU over its increasing use of violent militancy. She remained a strong advocate of women's rights, however, and used her gifts as a public speaker and writer on behalf of the cause. In 1907 her book The Convert was published. It was later turned into a play that became synonymous with the suffrage movement. Robins remained an active feminist throughout her life. In the 1920s she was a regular contributor to the feminist magazine, Time and Tide
Time and Tide (magazine)
Time and Tide was a British weekly political and literary review magazine founded by Margaret, Lady Rhondda in 1920. It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner...
. She also continued to write books such as Ancilla's Share: An Indictment of Sex Antagonism, which explored the issues of sexual inequality. She collected and edited speeches, lectures, and articles dealing with the women’s movement, some of which had never previously appeared in print (Way Stations, published by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1913).
Robins was involved in the campaign to allow women to enter the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
. Her friend, Margaret Haig
Margaret Mackworth, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda
Margaret Haig Mackworth, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda was a Welsh peeress and active suffragette.In 1908 she joined the Women's Social and Political Union , and became secretary of the WSPU's Newport branch...
, was the daughter of Viscount Rhondda
Viscount Rhondda
Viscount Rhondda, of Llanwern in the County of Monmouthshire, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1918 for the Welsh businessman and Liberal politician David Alfred Thomas, 1st Baron Rhondda, with special remainder to his daughter Margaret and her heirs male...
. He was a supporter of women's rights and in his will made arrangements for Margaret to inherit his title. This was considered radical, as women did not normally inherit peerage titles. When Rhondda died in 1918 the House of Lords refused to allow Margaret, now the Viscountess Rhondda, to take her seat. Robins wrote numerous articles on the subject, but the House of Lords refused to change its decision. It was not until 1958 that women were first admitted to the House.
Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence
Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence PC was a British Labour politician.-Background and education:...
credited Robins with explaining to him the difference between a suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
and a suffragist.
Personal life
A beautiful woman, Robins was pursued by many men. She admitted to a deep attraction to her close friend, the highly respected literary critic and fellow Ibsen scholar, William ArcherWilliam Archer (critic)
William Archer , Scottish critic, was born in Perth, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of M.A. in 1876. He was the son of Thomas Archer....
. As a married man Archer was unavailable, however. Except for her brief marriage to George Parks, she remained a fiercely independent single woman. Highly intelligent, she was welcomed into the cream of London's literary and artistic circles, enjoying friendships with George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, and Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, as well as a tempestuous romantic (but probably non-physical) relationship with the much younger future poet laureate John Masefield
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
.
In 1900 she traveled alone to the gold rush camps of Alaska in search of her favorite brother Raymond Robins
Raymond Robins
Raymond Robins was an American economist and writer. He was an advocate of organized labor and diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia under the Bolsheviks.-Biography:...
whom she feared was lost in the Yukon. After a long and arduous journey, she located Raymond in Nome. She shared his life in wild and lawless Alaska throughout the summer of 1900. Her adventures were not without cost – the typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
she contracted at that time compromised her health for the rest of her life. Robins's tales about Alaska provided material for a number of articles she sent on to London for publication. Her best selling book, The Magnetic North, is an account of her experiences, as is The Alaska-Klondike Diary of Elizabeth Robins.
Although she rejected her father's plans to be educated as a doctor, she retained a strong interest in medicine. In 1909 she met Octavia Wilberforce, a young woman whose fervent desire to study medicine was thwarted by a family that felt intellectualism and professional careers were 'unsexing' for women. When Wilberforce's father not only refused to pay for her studies, but disinherited her for pursuing them, Robins and other friends provided financial and moral support until she became a physician. While some have conjectured that Robins and Wilberforce were romantically involved, such insinuation has never been supported by the considerable scholarly material available about both women, nor is it born out in their own copious written material. All evidence points to Robins and Wilberforce enjoying a relationship much like that of mother and daughter. In her declining years she developed a friendship with Virginia
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
. Dr Wilberforce, the great-granddaughter of William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
, the British emancipator of slaves, looked after Robins until her death in 1952, just months shy of her 90th birthday.
Works
As C. E. Raimond, she wrote:- George Mandeville's Husband, 1894
- The New Moon, 1895
- Below the Salt, 1896
- The Open Question, 1898
The success of this last novel led to her publishing under her own name:
- The Alaska-Klondike diary of Elizabeth Robins, 1900
- The magnetic north, 1904
- A Dark Lantern, 1905
- The convert, 1907
Votes for Women! (A suffrage play produced at he Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London), 1907.
- Come and Find Me, 1908, a sequel to The magnetic north
- Camilla, 1918
- The Messenger, 1920
- Ancilla's share : an indictment of sex antagonism, 1924
See also
- History of feminismHistory of feminismThe history of feminism involves the story of feminist movements and of feminist thinkers. Depending on time, culture and country, feminists around the world have sometimes had different causes and goals...
- List of suffragists and suffragettes
- SuffragetteSuffragette"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
- Women's Social and Political UnionWomen's Social and Political UnionThe Women's Social and Political Union was the leading militant organisation campaigning for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom...
- Women's suffrageWomen's suffrageWomen's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
- Women's suffrage in the United KingdomWomen's suffrage in the United KingdomWomen's suffrage in the United Kingdom as a national movement began in 1872. Women were not prohibited from voting in the United Kingdom until the 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act...