Amy Coleridge

Amy Coleridge (1866-1951) was a British actress

Biography

Born Amy Matilda Cowbrick (or Cowlrick), but used the stage name Amy Coleridge.

She belonged to a famous theatrical family and acted in her first role at the age of 13 yrs.

After finishing her education in Paris, she joined the company of Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in London and visited the United States.

She married actor-director William Haviland in Chicago on 18 February 1884 and came to South Africa in 1895 as the leading lady in a Shakespearean company. They had two children, a son (an actor, who died in South Africa in 1924) and a daughter (possibly the actress Augusta Haviland). She and Haviland were later divorced, possibly 1901.

She next married the actor Percy Anstey in 1906 (real name Percival Louis Page Phillips) and eventually she married Archibald Brough Pearce. Amy died in Pietermaritzburg, (Durban?) South Africa on 4 August 1951.

Contribution to South African theatre, film, media and performance

Soon after their marriage, she and Haviland came to South Africa as members of the Holloway Theatre Company in 1895. She played Desdemona in Othello and Cordelia in King Lear at the Standard Theatre in Johannesburg.

In 1897 she returned with the Haviland and Lawrence Shakespearian & Dramatic Company to appear in their season of Shakespearian plays at the Port Elizabeth Opera House on January 3 & 4, 1898, directed by William Haviland and co-starring William Haviland and Gerald Lawrence.

In 1902 she appeared in three Broadway productions, but the apparently returned to South Africa to play for Leonard Rayne for many years and become a speech and drama teacher.

In 1910 for example she was a leading member of a Leonard Rayne company that put on a season of plays that included Henry of Navarre, The Woman in the Case, The Fires of Fate, The Sign of the Cross, East Lynne and The Silver King.

Sources

Eastern Province Herald, January 3, 1898.

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=202183.0

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/amy-coleridge-35843

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

Southern African Dictionary of National Biography, Eric Rosenthal, 1966. Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, London and New York.

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp.403, 433

Go to the ESAT Bibliography