Jane Wiseman

{{Short description|British actress, poet, & playwright (1673–c.1717)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}} {{other people||Jane Wiseman (disambiguation)}} '''Jane Holt ''' (née Wiseman; March 1673 – after 1717)<ref>[http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=wiseja Jane Wiseman] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181109153403/http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=wiseja |date=9 November 2018 }} at the Orlando Project, Cambridge University Press</ref> was a British poet and playwright, notable for being the first self-educated labouring-class woman to have a play professionally produced in London.<ref>Kendall. "Jane Wiseman". ''Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne'' London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 114—117. ([https://archive.org/embed/lovethunderplays0000unse Internet Archive])</ref>

Wiseman was possibly born in Holborn. She seems to have been from a modest labouring-class background and self-taught and she worked as a servant, but very little else is known about her. Her one play, ''Antiochus the Great, or, The Fatal Relapse'', was successfully produced at the New Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1701, and revived as late as 1721.<ref>Pearson, Jacqueline. ''The prostituted muse''. Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 235. ([https://archive.org/embed/prostitutedmuse00jacq Internet Archive])</ref> It was one of forty or so plays by women produced in London between 1695 and 1723, and is notable for its emphasis on female friendship.<ref>Kendall. Intro. ''Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne'' London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 9—12. ([https://archive.org/embed/lovethunderplays0000unse Internet Archive])</ref> She was part of a literary group with Susannah Centlivre, with whom she was friends, as well as George Farquhar, Abel Boyer, Ned Ward, and Tom Brown.<ref>Anon. ''Letters of Wit, Politicks and Morality''. (London, 1701, p. 21.), cited by Kendall. "Jane Wiseman". ''Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne'' London: Methuen, 1988, p. 114. ([https://archive.org/embed/lovethunderplays0000unse Internet Archive])</ref> [[File:Elizabeth Barry.png|thumb|alt=Black and white engraving of a woman's head and shoulders in profile|Tragedienne '''Elizabeth Barry''' played Leodice in Wiseman's ''Antiochus the Great'']] She is thought to have been the "Mrs Holt" whose collection of occasional and friendship poems, ''A Fairy Tale Inscrib'd, to the Honourable Mrs. W—, with other Poems'', was published in 1717.<ref name="ODNB">Christmas, William J. “[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60783 Holt, Jane (fl. c.1682–1717)].” ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Accessed 23 July 2022.</ref>

Wiseman took the proceeds from her success with ''Antiochus the Great'' and bought a tavern in Westminster for herself and her husband.<ref name="ODNB" />

==Etexts== *Wiseman, Jane. ''Antiochus the Great, or, The Fatal Relapse'' (1701). Rpt. in ''Love and thunder: plays by women in the age of Queen Anne'' Ed. and Intro. Kendall. London: Methuen, 1988, pp. 113–153. (Free with registration at the [https://archive.org/embed/lovethunderplays0000unse Internet Archive])

==See also== {{portal|Poetry}} * 1701 in literature * 1717 in poetry * List of 18th-century British working-class writers

==References== {{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiseman, Jane}} Category:1673 births Category:Year of death unknown Category:18th-century British women writers Category:18th-century British dramatists and playwrights Category:18th-century English poets Category:British women dramatists and playwrights Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:English women poets Category:18th-century English women writers