Eliza Ann Vincent
Eliza Ann Vincent | |
|---|---|
by Agnes Princess | |
| Born | 1 April 1815 |
| Died | 10 November 1856 (aged 41) |
| Occupations | theatre manager and actress |
| Known for | managing the success of the Royal Victoria Theatre |
| Partner | David Osbaldiston |
Eliza Ann Vincent or Miss Vincent (1 April 1815 – 10 November 1856) was a British actress and theatre manager
Life
Vincent was born in Southwark in 1815. Her parents were Ann and Philip Vincent and her father sold the news. Vincent became a child star after her first appearance in 1821 in George Dibdin Pitt's play The Ruffian Boy at the Surrey Theatre.[1]
Robert William Ellison who was the Actor/Manager at the Drury Lane Theatre, and he persuaded her change her allegiance. For three seasons she played a repertoire that included a Shakespeare play, a musical and the boy part of Little Pickles in The Spoiled Child. She played boys and throughout her career she took on breeches parts.[1]
From 1841, George Dibdin Pitt's play, Susan Hopley had a long-running success at the Royal Victoria Theatre. Susan Hopley; or, The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl, adapted from the novel Adventures of Susan Hopley; or, Circumstantial Evidence by Catherine Crowe.[2] Vincent was in the title role, she still backed Dibdin Pitt's work. She and the theatre achieved great success with this play which lasted a decade.[1] By 1849, it had been performed 343 times.[3]
In 1841, David Osbaldiston who was Vincent's lover took over as lessee of The Old Vic. In 1848 the theatre put on the first dramatization of Jane Eyre by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë) with Miss Vincent in the title role on February 9-12th. Osbaldiston was succeeded on his death in 1850 by Vincent who was still the theatre's leading lady.[1] The theatre remained devoted to melodrama. In 1858, sixteen people were crushed to death inside the theatre after mass panic caused after an actor's clothing caught fire.[4]
Vincent died in 1856[5] in Lambeth.
Private life
She never married and retained her name throughout her career.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e Ridgwell, Stephen (2026-02-12), "Vincent, Eliza Ann (1815–1856), actress and theatre manager", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000383002, ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8, retrieved 2026-02-26
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link) - ^ Moore, Haley (2008). "George Dibdin Pitt". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 344: Nineteenth-Century British Dramatists. Detroit: Gale. pp. 295–99.
- ^ Coleman, Terry (2014). The Old Vic: The Story of a Great Theatre from Kean to Olivier to Spacey. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 26–7. ISBN 978-0-571-31125-5.
- ^ "7 things you never knew about the Old Vic Theatre". 10 May 2018. Archived from the original on 20 March 2021. Retrieved 26 Feb 2026.
- ^ Ridgwell, Stephen (May 2024). "The Queen of the Vic: Eliza Vincent's Actress-Management of the Victoria Theatre, London, 1841–1856". Theatre Survey. 65 (2): 71–93. doi:10.1017/S0040557424000097. ISSN 0040-5574.