Mary Delarivier (sometimes spelt Delariviere, Delarivière or de la Rivière) Manley (1663 or c. 1670 - 1724) was an English novelist of amatory fiction, playwright, and political pamphleteer. She was a member, with writers Eliza Haywood and Aphra Behn, of the group known as The Fair Triumvirate of Wit. // Events Prix de Rome scholarship established for students of the arts. ... 1670 was a common year beginning on a Saturday in countries using the Julian calendar and a Wednesday in countries using the Gregorian calendar. ... Events January 14 - King Philip V of Spain abdicates the throne February 20 - The premiere of Giulio Cesare, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, takes place in London June 23 - Treaty of Constantinople signed. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... Amatory fiction is a genre of British literature popular during the late 17th century and 18th century. ... Mrs. ... A sketch of Aphra Behn by George Scharf from a portrait believed to be lost. ...

Biography

Manley was probably born in Jersey, the third of six children of Sir Roger Manley, a royalist army officer and historian, and a woman from the Spanish Netherlands, who died when Delarivier was young. The details of her early life are mostly known from autobiographical accounts which may be unreliable, yet it seems that she and her sister Cornelia moved with their father to his various army postings.

After their father's death in 1687, the girls became wards of their cousin, John Manley (1654-1713), a Tory MP. John Manley had married a Cornish heiress and, later, bigamously, married Delarivier. They had a son in 1691, also named John. In January 1694 Manley left her husband and went to live with Lady Castlemaine, at one time the mistress of Charles II. She remained there only six months, at which time she was expelled by the duchess for allegedly flirting with her son. Polygamy, literally many marriages in ancient Greek, is a marital practice in which a person has more than one spouse simultaneously (as opposed to monogamy where each person has a maximum of one spouse at any one time). ... Events February 6 - The colony Quilombo dos Palmares is destroyed. ... Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine Barbara Villiers (November 1640 - October 9, 1709), Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most notorious of Charles IIs mistresses. ... Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was the King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from 30 January 1649 (de jure) or 29 May 1660 (de facto) until his death. ...

During the period of 1694-1696 Manley travelled extensively in England, principally in the south-west. At this time she wrote her first play, a comedy, The Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband (1696). There is some indication that she may have been by then reconciled with her husband, for a time. The year 1696 had the earliest equinoxes and solstices for 400 years in the Gregorian calendar, because this year is a leap year and the Gregorian calendar would have behaved like the Julian calendar since March 1500 had it have been in use that long. ...

Manley's satirical attacks on the Whigs at one point resulted in payment from the then Prime Minister Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (5 December 1661 – 21 May 1724), was an English statesman of the Stuart and early Georgian periods. ...

Her texts currently receive considerable attention from feminist literary critics because they are widely considered to offer an early or proto-feminist perspective and to deal thematically with the reification of the female body, and the validity of a female point of view. This was radical for the time, as was her life.

Works

• Letters written by Mrs Manley (1696)
• The Lost Lover or The Jealous Husband (1696), a comedy
• The Royal Mischief (1696), a tragedy
• Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians (1705)
• Almyna, or the Arabian Jew (1707), a tragedy
• Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of Both Sexes, from the new Atlantis, an island in the Mediterranean (1709), a satire in which great liberties were taken with Whig notables
• Memoirs of Europe towards the Close of the Eight Century. Written by Eginardus (1710)
• A True Narrative of What Passed at the Examination of the Marquis of Guiscard (1711)
• Court Intruigues in a Collection of Original Letters from the Island of the New Atalantis (1711)
• The Adventures of Rivella, or the History of the Author of The New Atalantis (1714)

She also edited Jonathan Swift's Examiner. In her writings she played with classical names and spelling. She was an uninhibited and effective political writer. This article contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... The Whigs (with the Tories) are often described as one of two political parties in England and later the United Kingdom from the late 17th to the mid 19th centuries. ... Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish priest, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, and poet, famous for works like Gullivers Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapiers Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. ... This article is about publication entitled Examiner The Examiner The Examiner was a weekly paper founded by Leigh and John Hunt in 1808. ...

References

• Ros Ballaster, 'Delarivier Manley (c. 1663-1724)' at www.chawton.org
• Ros Ballaster, ‘Manley, Delarivier (c.1670–1724)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 11 Nov 2006
• Dale Spender (1986) Mothers of the Novel
• "Manley, Delarivier." British Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide. Janet Todd, ed. London: Routledge, 1989. 436-440.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton. Dale Spender, or dale spender (born 1943) is an Australian feminist scholar, teacher, writer and consultant. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature is a collection of biographies of writers by John W. Cousin, published around 1910. ...