The Theatrical Career of Mary Ann Canning, Part 1: November 1773–December 1776

Mary Ann Canning, née Costello, also named Reddish and Hunn (1747/50-1827) took to the stage after the death of her first husband George Canning (a poet and occasional pamphleteer), in order to provide for herself and her children. She first appeared at Drury Lane on 6 November 1773, as Jane Shore in Nicholas Rowe's tragedy of that name. Her final London appearance was as Princess Azema in George Ayscough's translation of Voltaire's Semiramis in December 1776, but she continued on the provincial stage until 1788, or perhaps 1791. Her eldest son, and only surviving child by her first husband, George Canning the poet, was George Canning the politician (1770-1827) who became British Foreign Secretary and, briefly, Prime Minister. Shortly after her début Mary Ann became the mistress of Samuel Reddish, who was the father of five of her twelve children. Having separated from Reddish she married a Plymouth draper called Richard Hunn, with whom she had four more children. After she left the stage the focus of Mary Ann's life was her relationship with her son George, and it is difficult to see past his glamour to appreciate that Mary Ann herself was an impressive character—courageous, strong-willed, resourceful and intelligent. The primary aim of this and two subsequent articles on Mary Ann's theatrical career is to rescue her from the condescension of biographers of George Canning the politician. Dorothy Marshall, for instance, in her 1938 study of Canning's youth and early career, wrote of Mary Ann that "Like many other untrained

Undated anonymous portrait of Mary Ann Hunn, from the Frederick Gale Collection at the West Yorkshire Archive, Leeds,

reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service.

and beautiful women her thoughts turned to the stage" (4), which is accurate enough, but makes light of Mary Ann's difficulties and obscures her complex motives for embarking on a stage career, and persevering for some fifteen years.

The genealogist Frederick Gale, who was married to a descendant of another of Mary Ann's children, having inherited some family letters and other memorabilia, devoted himself to investigating her life. He uncovered much about Mary Ann's antecedents, and found numerous contemporary references to her acting career, from which he sensed that she was a remarkable woman. Although he wrote a series of articles about her in Notes and Queries during the 1920s and 1930s, and planned a biography, Gale found in the end that there was too little information. The documents that both he and Dorothy Marshall lacked were among the Canning papers at Harewood House, which were first studied and catalogued by Cedric Collyer in the 1950s. Along with many important political documents there are some two thousand letters that Canning wrote to his mother, and a few of hers to him, along with other family correspondence.¹ Collyer worked on a biography of Canning, using the Harewood papers and dwelling more upon the politician's family background than other biographers have done, but the book remained unfinished when he died in 1994. Mary Ann's letters include one of more than 65,000 words, written in 1803 at a crisis in their relationship. This long, passionate letter, which Mary Ann and George both referred to as "the Packet", told the history of her life.²

In the 1970s biographies of George Canning the politician appeared by Wendy Hinde and Peter Dixon, both of whom made extensive use of the Canning papers at Harewood House, without, it appears, seeing Mary Ann's Packet. The present series of articles constitutes the first attempt to tell Mary Ann's story in her own words. This first article describes her career up until her final appearance at Drury Lane. A second will cover her provincial career, while a third will discuss her reasons for renouncing the profession in 1791, and consider her own and her son's attitudes to her career.

Mary Ann's story is, above all, that of a woman...