Mary Pix (1666–1709)

Mary Pix, née Griffiths, was born in Oxfordshire, England, the daughter of a clergyman and schoolmaster. Despite becoming fluent in English and French literature, Mary received little formal education. In 1684, at age 18, she married George Pix, a London merchant with whom she had two sons. While living in London, she became a successful and popular professional writer, with her first play, Ibrahim the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks (1696), staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was quickly followed by a novel, The Inhuman Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (1696), and another play, The Spanish Wives (1696). She was the acknowledged author of seven plays, including The Beau Defeated (1700); four other plays that were published anonymously are now generally attributed to her, making a total of about a dozen. In 1697, she switched to Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and remained with that theatre for the rest of her life. She was a friend of the writers William Congreve, Catharine Trotter, Susanna Centlivre, and the famous actress Elizabeth Barry.