Anna Cora Mowatt

Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie ( born March 5, 1819 in Bordeaux, † July 21, 1870 in Twickenham ) was an American author, playwright and actress.

Biography

Born as Anna Cora Ogden in Bordeaux, France, she was the tenth of eleven children. Her father was governor Samuel Ogden (1779-1860) and her mother was Eliza Lewis Ogden (1785 - 1836), the granddaughter of Francis Lewis, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. 1826 the family moved back to the USA.

On October 6, 1834 she married James Mowatt (1805 - 1849), a lawyer. They moved to Flatbush, New York. Her first book, Pelayo, or The Cavern of Covadonga, was published in 1836 under the pseudonym " Isabel ". Under another pseudonym, Henry C. Browning, she wrote a biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In 1845, her best-known work, fashion, published. In the same year she began her career as an actress in the staging of The Lady of Lyons.