Susanna Centlivre

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Susanna Centlivre (born Susanna Freeman, also known professionally as Susanna Carroll; baptised November 1667 - December 1, 1723), was an English poet and actress and one of the premier dramatists of the eighteenth century. During her long career at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane she became known as the Second Woman of the English Stage after Aphra Behn. Her success was so great that David Garrick chose one of her plays in which to make his farewell performance. The main source of information on Centlivre's early life is Giles Jacob, who claimed that he had the information from her directly (Poetical Register of 1719). She was born in Holbeach, near Spalding, Lincolnshire in 1667 Her father, William Freeman, was a dissenter in Ireland, and her mother's name was Anne. William was apparently abusive, and, after the English Restoration, certainly impoverished, and Susanna ran away from home. Abel Boyer, a Whig historian who published Centlivre's early writing, corroborates some of Jacob's account, but suggests that Centlivre may have been orphaned.