HANNAH

COWLEY (1743-1809)  , English dramatist and poet, daughter of Philip Parkhouse, a bookseller at Tiverton, Devon-shire, was born in 1743 . When about twenty-five years old she married Mr Cowley, of the East India Company's service, who died in 1797 . ' Some years after her marriage, being at the theatre with her husband, she expressed the opinion that she could write as good a piece as the one being performed, and within a fortnight she had written her first play, The Runaway . She sent it to Garrick, who produced it at Drury Lane in 1776 . Between then and 1795 she wrote twelve more plays, all of which (with one exception) were produced at Drury Lane or Covent Garden; and The Belle's Stratagem (1782), with one or two others, still survives in the list of acting plays . Among other. pieces were Albina, Countess Raimond, A Bold Stroke for a Husband, More Ways than One, and A School for Greybeards, or The Mourning Bride . Mrs Cowley was the author of a number of indifferent poems, mainly historical, and under the name of " Anna Matilda," which has since become proverbial, she carried on a sentimental correspondence in the World with Robert Merry . She died at Tiverton on the r 1 th of March 1809 .