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Edith Ailsa Geraldine Craig

(1869-1947), Actress, theatre director, producer and set and costume designer; daughter of Ellen Terry

Sitter in 4 portraits
Daughter of actress Ellen Terry, Craig made her first appearance on the London stage in 1878 and went on to design costumes and act for the Lyceum Theatre. Edith Craig & Co. was established by Craig, producing theatre costumes and collaborating on productions with her mother and brother Edward. Craig felt strongly that 'no self-respecting woman could be other than a suffragist' and in 1911 set up the Pioneer Players, a theatre society producing plays on women's suffrage. As well as working for the Actresses' Franchise League, Craig collaborated with Cicely Hamilton to create A Pageant of Great Women attracting large audiences across Britain. Craig lived with her partner, the dramatist Christabel Marshall in London.

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Professor Katharine Cockin

25 August 2018, 17:32

See biographies:
Katharine Cockin, Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives (Cassell 1998)
Katharine Cockin, Edith Craig and the Theatres of Art (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2017)
Katharine Cocin, 'Edith Craig', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
www.ellenterryarchive.hull.ac.uk

Edith Craig was one of the leading directors of women's suffrage plays and organised several street processions. She was a lesbian and her partners were Christopher St John (Christabel Marshall) and Tony Atwood (Clare). They lived at 31 Bedford Street, Covent Garden and at Priest's House, Tenterden, Kent. Atwood joined them in 1916. Edith Craig was a leader of the British Drama League from 1919. Craig was also art director of the Leeds Art Theatre and directed a season of George Bernard Shaw plays at the Everyman Theatre Hampstead. She is said to be the model for the character Miss Latrobe in Virginia Woolf's novel Between the Acts (1941). Craig appeared in some films including Fires of Fate, filmed in Egypt not long after the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Craig's archive is owned by the National Trust and described online here: www.ellenterryarchive.hull.ac.uk