Mary de la Riviere Manley

Background

Mary de la Riviere Manley was born on April 7, 1663, in Jersey, the third of six children of Sir Roger Manley and a woman from the Spanish Netherlands, who died when Mary was.

Career

She wrote her own biography under the title of The Adventures of Rivella, or the History of the Author of the Atalantis by "Sir Charles Lovemore" (1714). According to her own account she was left an orphan at the age of sixteen, and beguiled into a mock marriage with a kinsman who deserted her basely three years afterwards. She was patronized for a short time by the duchess of Cleveland, and wrote an unsuccessful comedy, The Lost Lover (1696); in freedom of speech she equalled the most licentious writers of comedy in that generation. Her tragedy, The Royal Mischief (1696) was more successful. From 1696 Mrs Manley was a favourite member of witty and fashionable society. In 1705 appeared The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians, a satire on Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, in the guise of romance. This was probably by Mrs Manley, who, four years later, achieved her principal triumph as a writer by her Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality (1709), a scandalous chronicle "from the New Atalantis, an island in the Mediterranean. " She was arrested in the autumn of 1709 as the author of a libellous publication, but was discharged by the court of queen's bench on February 13, 1710. Mrs. Manley sought in this scandalous narrative to expose the private vices of the ministers whom Swift, Bolingbroke and Harley combined to drive from office. During the keen political campaign in 1711 she wrote several pamphlets, and many numbers of the Examiner, criticizing persons and policy with equal vivacity. Later were published her tragedy Lucius (1717); The Power of Love, in Seven Novels (1720), and A Stage Coach Journey to Exeter (1725).

Mary de la Riviere Manley died on July 24, 1724, in London, after a violent fit of the cholic which lasted five days. Her body was interred in the middle aisle of the Church of St. Benet at Paul's-Wharf.

Achievements

• Mary de la Riviere Manley was a prominent writer who achieved notoriety through presenting political scandal in the form of romance.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Adventures Of Rivella: Or, The History Of The Author...of The New Atlantis. With Secret Memoirs And Manners Of Several Considerable Persons Her Contemporaries

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • Lucius, the First Christian King of Britain: A Tragedy (1717)

Connections

Mary de la Riviere Manley married her cousin, John Manley. They had a son in 1691, also named John.

Father:

Sir Roger Manley

Sir Roger Manley was a royalist army officer and historian.

Sister:

Mary Manley

Sister:

Cornelia Manley

Son:

John Manley, Jr.

husband:

John Manley, Sr.