Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) It is widely attributed to Charles Dibdin (1748–1814) and may have been written for the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Festival of 1769: Anne is depicted in fiction during the 19th century, when Shakespeare starts to become a figure in wider national and popular culture. Emma Severn's novel "Anne Hathaway, or, Shakespeare in Love" (1845) portrays an idealised romance and happy marriage in an idyllic rural Stratford. She also appears in William Black's 1884 novel "Judith Shakespeare" about her daughter, portrayed as a conventional dutiful wife and concerned parent with a wayward daughter. By the early 20th century a more negative image of
Shakespeare Ladies Club 1st Earl Cowper, and an elder cousin of the famous poet William Cowper. She married William de Grey, 1st Baron Walsingham in 1743. Mary Cowper recorded her involvement with the Shakespeare Ladies’ Club in a poem titled “On the Revival of Shakespear’s Plays by the Ladies in 1738,” which was preserved in the "Cowper Family Miscelany". The poem was reprinted in full in Michael Dobson's "The Making of the National Poet". Shakespeare Ladies Club The Shakespeare Ladies Club (or Shakespeare Ladies' Club) refers to a group of upper class and aristocratic women who petitioned the London theatres to produce William