author

Elizabeth Baker

1876–1962

Best known for quiet, sharply observed plays about everyday people, this English dramatist brought the pressures of class, work, and marriage onto the Edwardian stage. Her writing has been praised for its realism and for the sympathy it shows to lower-middle-class lives.

1 Audiobook

Chains: A Play, in Four Acts

Chains: A Play, in Four Acts

by Elizabeth Baker

About the author

Elizabeth Baker was an English playwright, born on 20 August 1876 and died on 8 March 1962. Reliable sources describe her as a writer whose plays focused on class, gender, and social mobility, especially in the domestic and working lives of the lower middle class.

She earned her living mainly as a typist while building her writing career. Her breakthrough play, Chains (first performed in 1909), looks closely at suburban clerical life in Edwardian England, and other works include The Price of Thomas Scott, Miss Tassey, and Miss Robinson.

Baker was also involved in the women's suffrage movement, including the Women Writers' Suffrage League and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She married James Allaway in June 1915, and her work has continued to attract interest for its clear-eyed, humane picture of ordinary lives.