Scribbling Woman directed me to an interesting Monash University
catalogue from a rare book exhibition.

A rough count finds 12 of the 104 exhibits are by women (including appearances in anthologies) – more than 10 per cent, and if the very early (pre-1500) authors are excluded, rather more. (No.s 32, 39, 56-58, 59, 62, 77-79, 91 and 91.) It is not of course a scientific sample, but still an interestingly high number.

A lot of the women are the “usual suspects” – Fanny Burney, Lady Montagu and “the fair Orinda” – but there is a dramatist whose name I have not previously heard: Mary Pix. Having been the wife of a merchant tailor, she seems to fit into that “middling sort”, professional writer, class.

A neat biog can be found here, which notes that her supposed date of death, 1709, “is supported by evidence from the Post Boy, 26-28 May, and the Daily Courant of 25 May 1709, which both contain advertisements for a benefit performance of Susanna Centlivre’s play The Busie-Body, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the proceeds of which would go to Pix’s estate”. Interesting that it was another woman playwright whose work was chosen.

Her work is in Eighteenth-century Women Dramatists (Oxford World’s Classics) and there’s a portrait of her in the National Portrait Gallery. Also her husband.

A complete report from the The Salisbury And Winchester Journal
and General Advertiser of Wilts, Hants, Dorset, and Somerset of Monday, August 2, 1819, records that a team of married women took on a team of single women, the later, presumably younger and fitter, winning comfortably. “One of them played particularly well, and seldom missed a hit.” (Unfortunately none of the players are named.)

And these were “professionals” – “we understand that a subscription amounting to £15 was divided amongst them, the winners of course having the greatest share”.

As a cricketer – without qualifier, although I am usually the only “Female” on the pitch – nice to read about my predecessors.

Thanks the C-18 poster for this reference, which also has a selection of interesting other articles, including of course the inevitable dog story, from the same journal, but on Monday, August 26, 1782 …

“Yesterday a young man leaped from the centre of Battersea-bridge, to swim up river against time for a wage of five guineas, but he was instantly followed by a Newfoundland dog, belonging to a casual passenger, who seized him by the arm, and without drawing blood, dragged him to shore, to the infinite merriment of a great number of spectators, who joined in paying a tribute of praise to this sagacious and generous animal.”