MANLEY, Mary de la Rivier (1672-1724), dramatist, political writer, and novelist, the most eminent female “wit” of the reign of Queen Anne, was the daughter of a studious and literary royalist, Sir Roger Manley, governor of the Channel Islands, part author of The Turkish Spy., and author of several military histories. Mrs Manley is herself the chief authority for such particulars of her private life as are known. Towards the close of Anne’s reign, finding that Curll had announced The Adventures of Rivella, or the History of the Author of Atalantis, and suspecting this to be the work of an enemy, she contrived with dexterous tact to supplant Curll’s author, and wrote her own biography under the announced title. Her mother died when she was a child, her father when she was a girl of sixteen. A kinsman, already married, took advantage of her position, went through a mock ceremony of marriage, and deserted her basely three years afterwards. She was patronized for a short time by the duchess of Cleveland, and in 1696 made good a position among writers of established reputation by two plays, a comedy and a tragedy. The dialogue of the comedy, The Lost Lover, is extremely brilliant and witty, overflowing with high animal spirits; in freedom of speech it goes almost beyond the most licentious male writers of comedy in that generation. The play was at once published. In the preface she thanks the town for not keeping her long in suspense: her comedy was damned with promptitude. A similar fate befel her tragedy, The Royal Mischief, though great literary power was shown in it. The splendid energy of the characters, and the hyperbolical vigour of their language, may be compared with the undisciplined youth of the Elizabethan drama; but it was not without reason that even ...