Susanna Centlivre

Born Susanna Freeman and later also known as Susanna Carroll, she became an English playwright, poet, and actress whose life has often been surrounded by colorful stories. Some details of her early years remain uncertain, but she is generally associated with the late 1660s and is known to have died in London on December 1, 1723.

She built a long connection with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and earned a reputation as one of the most successful female playwrights of the 18th century. Her comedies, including The Busie Body and A Bold Stroke for a Wife, were admired for their energy, stagecraft, and clever treatment of love, money, and social ambition.

Her work outlasted many of her contemporaries on the stage. Readers and theatergoers still return to her for the same reasons audiences did in her own time: quick-moving plots, memorable comic situations, and a lively sense that wit can upset the rules of polite society.