Lena Ashwell actrress Suffragette Savoy Century theatre

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PAYMENT by PAYPAL ONLY (within 7 days) (Exceptionally UK Postal Orders by prior arrangement) Postage will be combined on multiple purchases SIGNED APPOINTMENT NOTE.SIGNED: LENA ASHWELL ASHWELL, LENA (1872-1957) Appointment note, signed: To see the editor re Registration Scheme for Women. A voluntary registration scheme for women was introduce in March 1915. Ashwell, Lena [ real name Lena Margaret Pocock; married name Lena Margaret Simson, Lady Simson] (1872–1957), actress and theatre manager , was born on 28 September 1872 aboard a training ship moored in the Tyne, the Wellesley , the daughter of Captain Charles Ashwell Botelar Pocock and his wife, Sarah Margaret Stevens. She was the third daughter in a large and religious family; one of her brothers, Roger Pocock, later became a traveller and founder of the Legion of Frontiersmen. When she was eight the family moved to Canada at Brockwell on the St Lawrence River . Here her father became a minister and Lena Ashwell was educated at Bishop Strachan's School for Young Ladies in Toronto and the University of Toronto , and later specialized in music at the Swiss State School , the Lausanne conservatoire, and the Royal Academy of Music in London . On the advice of Ellen Terry, who was adjudicating an elocution class in which she was training, Ashwell gave up her career in music in favour of one in acting. She used her father's middle name professionally.Lena Ashwell eventually found acting work through the professional support of Malcolm Watson (later theatre correspondent of the Daily Mail ) and her first engagement as an actress was in a production of The Pharisee by M. Watson and Mrs L. Wallis in March 1891. By 1892 she was touring with George Alexander in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan . Various London and touring roles followed but it was as Elaine in Comyns Carr's King Arthur with Henry Irving that she gained significant critical notice in 1895. Ashwell was now in constant employment and her role as Mrs Dane in Charles Wyndham's production of Mrs Dane's Defence (1900) by H. A. Jones brought her into the ranks of one of the half-dozen leading actresses of the day. From this point on she was often given lead female roles such as Katusha in Resurrection (1903) by M. Morton, Leah in Leah Kleschna by C. M. S. McLellan in 1905, and her much-praised 1909 performance in Madame X by John N. Raphael. Ashwell was known as an actress of great soul, who chose to play what were then considered to be ‘modern’ parts which demanded emotional force and sincerity. During this first phase of her career she worked with many of the iconic actor–managers of the Victorian period and this was to influence the way in which her own career developed.During the Edwardian period Ashwell took on the management of the Savoy Theatre in 1906 and then refurbished and reopened Penley's Theatre in Great Queen Street as the Kingsway in 1907. Her dedication to suffrage politics coincided with her years of actor management and it was the Kingsway which saw the first production of Cicely Hamilton's feminist play Diana of Dobson's (1908) with Ashwell in the lead. Ashwell later worked with Hamilton again as part of her work organizing entertainments for the troops during the First World War. At the Kingsway she encouraged among other things matinée performances of new plays by new playwrights, and her wish to produce theatre which appealed to the mind meant that productions were not always commercially successful. Financial constraints eventually forced her into subletting the theatre to other managements. According to Votes for Women (13 February 1914): when the woman theatrical manager was practically unheard of she made a brilliant success of an enterprise that gave the public a series of plays in which the woman's point of view was never left out; and so she won another outpost for the advancing woman's army. Ashwell's political and ideological beliefs infiltrated her work to a significant degree during the... read more

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