Annie Edwardes

Annie Edwards
Born	c. 1830
Died	1896
Occupation	novelist

Annie Edwards (c. 1830–1896), also known as Annie Edwardes, was a popular English novelist during the Victorian era. She wrote 21 books, three of which were adapted for the theatre. She is perhaps most famous for her 1866 novel, Archie Lovell, which the playwright F. C. Burnand adapted in 1874.

Annie Cook was born in approximately 1830, was married to John Edwards and had one known child, a son, born in 1859. No one has yet discovered her exact birthplace or hometown, although the location of her novels suggest that she spent part of her life in the Channel Islands. When she became an established author, she began to use the surname "Edwardes", perhaps to differentiate her work from her female contemporaries, Amelia Edwards and Matilda Betham-Edwards.

Her literary career began in 1858 with the publication her first novel, The Morals of May Fair. The Examiner called it "one of the cleverest novels of the day," and the Literary Gazette, though lamenting its overambitious plot, conceded that the story was "powerfully imagined". Her first major breakthrough occurred eight years and six novels later with the publication of Archie Lovell. The Saturday Review likened the appearance of this novel to the transformation of an ugly duckling into a swan, and the London Review stated that the public would take "deepened interest" in her career after reading such an enjoyable novel. It was also her first novel to be published in the United States.

As her career progressed, the heroines of her novels became more nontraditional and Bohemian. Her novel Archie Lovell has been called "the apotheosis of Bohemianism." After its success in 1866, Edwards began to produce novels with more daring heroines which, due to their popularity, raised her average pay up to a respectable £500 per work and placed her among the notable novelists of her time.

In 1869, F.C. Burnand adapted her novel The Morals of May Fair into a play entitled The Turn of the Tide. Despite receiving poor reviews in the Athenaeum, the public seemed to enjoy the adaptation, and it showed "every sign of a success." Five years later, Burnand used her work again in the play Archie Lovell, which was also fairly popular. The third and final novel to be adapted as a play was Ought We to Visit Her? by W. S. Gilbert in 1874.

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