Frances Sheridan (1724–1766) was an Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

 novelist and playwright.

Frances Sheridan was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her father, Dr. Phillip Chamberlaine, was an Anglican minister. In 1747 she married Thomas Sheridan, who was then an actor and theatre director, and at the same time she began work on her first novel, Eugenia and Adelaide. The couple moved to London permanently in 1758 for business reasons (after an earlier sortie to London in 1754). In London Frances was introduced to Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...

, who encouraged her in her writing. Her most successful novel, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761), in diary

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

 format, was influenced by Samuel Richardson's Pamela

Pamela

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740. It tells the story of a beautiful but poor 15-year old servant-maid named Pamela Andrews whose master, Mr. B, a nobleman, makes unwanted advances towards her after the death of his mother whose maid she...

. She then turned to drama, and two of her plays were produced at London's Drury Lane

Drury Lane

Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....

 theatre by David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

's company in the 1760s. Frances Sheridan was the mother of the more famous playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...

, and the son's early successful plays were much influenced by the mother's plays. She died at age 42 in Blois, France.

Works

Plays

• The Discovery (1763)
• The Dupe (1764)
• A Trip to Bath (1765)

Novels

• Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761)
• The History of Nourjahad (1767)
• Continuation of the Memoirs (1767)
• Eugenia and Adelaide (unpublished until 1791)