Katherine Githa Sowerby (6 October 1876 – 30 June 1970), also known under her pen name K. G. Sowerby, was an English playwright, children's writer, and member of the Fabian Society. A feminist, she was well-known during the early twentieth century for her 1912 hit play Rutherford & Son, but lapsed into obscurity in later decades.
Rutherford & Son was first revived in 1980, and since then there have been several productions, including one at the Royal National Theatre in 1994 and, most recently, by Sheffield Theatres. A biography of Sowerby by Pat Riley, Looking for Githa, appeared in 2009, with a revised edition in 2019. In addition to several plays, Sowerby wrote books of poetry and short stories for children, illustrated by her sister Millicent Sowerby. Her papers and memorabilia are in the collections at the Tyne and Wear Archives.
Life and career
Sowerby was born in 1876 in Gateshead, England, into the Sowerbys, a glass-making family. Her father, John G. Sowerby, was an artist and grandson of naturalist James Sowerby, and her mother was Amy Margaret Sowerby (née Hewison). Sowerby married John Kendall, and they had one daughter, Joan (1918-2013)
Rutherford & Son was a "sensation" and a "massive success" in its 1912 London debut, running for 133 performances in London and 63 performances in New York. Literary critic Barrett Harper Clark, writing in 1915, declared it "among the most powerful works of the younger generation". It was also produced in Canada and Australia, and translated into numerous other languages, including German, French, Italian, Russian, and Bohemian. Originally produced under the pen name "G. K. Sowerby", it was only later revealed that the author of the hit play was a woman; Sowerby then achieved instant celebrity. Sowerby's writing was compared to Henrik Ibsen's at that point, while known only by the gender-neutral initials "G. K."
Bibliography
Plays
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Children's books
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Notes
- ^ Barbara Hodgson, "Author Is Brought Back to Life", The Journal, 17 September 2009.
- ^ Parker, John, ed. (1922). "Sowerby, Katherine Githa". Who's Who in the Theatre. Pitman. p. 748.
- ^ Mark Brown, "Githa Sowerby, the forgotten playwright, returns to the stage", Guardian, 14 August 2009
- Riley, Looking for Githa, Revised edition 2019
- ^ BBC, "Tyneside honours forgotten writer" (26 August 2009).
- Barrett Harper Clark (1915). "Githa Sowerby". The British and American Drama of To-day: Outlines for Their Study. H. Holt. pp. 154–155.
- Rose Drew, "Patricia Riley on Playwright Githa Sowerby" Archived 31 January 2013 at archive.today, One&Other: York, 11 December 2011.
Further reading
- Riley, Patricia (2009). Looking for Githa. New Writing North. pp. 1–156. ISBN 978-0955882944.
- Riley, Patricia (2019). Looking for Githa. Stairwell Books. pp. 1–239. ISBN 978-1-939269-83-6.
- Gainor, J. Ellen (2013). "Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby, and: The Stepmother by Githa Sowerby (review)". Theatre Journal. 65 (4): 559–561. doi:10.1353/tj.2013.0103. ISSN 1086-332X. S2CID 194016179. (Subscription required)
- Stowell, S. (1994). A stage of their own: Feminist playwrights of the suffrage era. Ann Arbor, Mich: Univ. of Michigan Press. p. 129–156.
- Kevin De Ornellas, "Githa Sowerby". In Gabrielle H. Cody and Evert Sprinchorn, eds, The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, 2 volumes (Columbia University Press, 2007), volume 2, pp. 1265-66. ISBN 9780231140324.
External links
- Woman's Hour on BBC
- "Githa Sowerby" Archived 24 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine, The Orlando Project
- Works by or about Githa Sowerby at the Internet Archive
- A Man and Some Women: a play in three acts on Great War Theatre
- 1876 births
- 1970 deaths
- 20th-century English dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century English women writers
- English children's writers
- British women dramatists and playwrights
- English feminist writers
- Socialist feminists
- 20th-century pseudonymous writers
- Pseudonymous women writers
- Members of the Fabian Society
- People from Gateshead
- Writers from Tyne and Wear