Davys, Mary | Nancy Cotton (essay date 1980)
Nancy Cotton (essay date 1980)
SOURCE: "Minor Women Playwrights 1670-1750," in Women Playwrights in England c. 1363-1750, Bucknell University Press; Associated University Presses, 1980, pp. 156-60.
[In the following excerpt, Cotton discusses Mary Davys' work as a dramatist.]
Mary Davys (1674-1732),7 born in Dublin, was happily married to the Reverend Peter Davys, headmaster of the free school at St. Patrick's and a friend of Swift. When he died young in 1698, she was widowed and without means at the age of twenty-four. She went to England and tried writing. In 1700 she made an unsuccessful "first Flight to the Muses" (Works, 1:v) with a novel, The Lady's Tale, for which she received three guineas. She then settled in York for fifteen years. Although she was helped occasionally by Swift, it is not known how she eked out a living during this period. About the age of forty-one, this "Female Muse, from Northern Clime"...
[The entire page is 1291 words long]
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