author
James Townley
Best known for the lively farce High Life Below Stairs, this 18th-century English clergyman and playwright wrote sharp comedy that stayed popular long after its first performance. His work mixes stage wit with a revealing look at class, manners, and everyday life in Georgian England.
1 Audiobook
Parturition without Pain or Loss of Consciousness
by James Townley
About the author
Born in London on May 6, 1714, James Townley was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at St John's College, Oxford. He became a Church of England clergyman, but he is now chiefly remembered for his writing for the stage.
Townley was the author of High Life Below Stairs, a two-act farce first performed at Drury Lane in 1759. The play became his best-known work and was noted for its comic take on servants imitating the fashions and behavior of their social superiors. He also wrote False Concord and The Tutor.
He died in 1778. Today, Townley is remembered as one of those writers whose reputation rests on a single enduring success—yet that success offers a vivid glimpse of theatrical taste and social satire in 18th-century Britain.