Delarivier manley biography of barack

English writer

Delarivier "Delia" Manley^[1] (1663 or c. 1670 – 24 July 1724) was an English author, playwright, and political pamphleteer.

Manley is sometimes referred to, with Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood, as one of "the fair triumvirate of wit", which is a later attribution.

Some outdated sources list her first name as Mary, but recent scholarship has demonstrated that to be an error: Mary was the name of one of her sisters, and she always referred to herself as Delarivier or Delia.^[2]

Early life and theatrical writings

Much of what is known about Manley is rooted in her insertion of "Delia's story" in The New Atalantis (1709)^[3] and the Adventures of Rivella that she published as the biography of the author of the Atalantis with Edmund Curll in 1714.^[4] Curll added further details on the publication history behind the Rivella in the first posthumous edition of the quasi-fictional and not ent