Mary Carleton

Mary Jo Kietzman (University of Michigan, Flint)

Ed. by Jacqueline Eales, Canterbury Christ Church University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.04: English Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century, 1625-1688.
Vol. editors: Jennifer Brady (Rhodes College), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne), Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University)

Dates

Born 22 Jan 1635
Died 22 Jan 1673
Activity 1663-1673

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Theatre actor

Resources

Carleton's Works

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Mary Carleton was a low-born but exceptionally literate woman who initiated a public career when she impersonated a fictional German gentlewoman, Maria von Wolway, in London in 1663. Her performance won her a husband, the upwardly mobile law student John Carleton, who prosecuted her for bigamy when the fortune she implied failed to materialize. Her acquittal at the Old Bailey was cheered by the crowds, and she became a heroine of Restoration popular culture because her successful performance of a fictional identity democratized self-fashioning. She would continue to serialize herself in a sequence of personages that enabled her to claim economic independence through work as an author, actress, self-sufficient trader on the market for second-hand goods, and finally professional shoplifter.…

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2128 words

Citation: Kietzman, Mary Jo. "Mary Carleton". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 September 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=742, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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