Edith Craig

Edith Ailsa Geraldine Craig (9 December 1869 – 27 March 1947) was a prolific theatre director, producer, costume designer and early pioneer of the women's suffrage movement in England. She was the daughter of actress Ellen Terry and the progressive English architect-designer Edward William Godwin, and the sister of theatre practitioner Edward Gordon Craig.

As a lesbian, an active campaigner for women's suffrage, and a woman working as a theatre director and producer, Edith Craig has been recovered by feminist scholars as well as theatre historians. Craig lived in a ménage à trois with the dramatist Christabel Marshall and the artist Clare 'Tony' Atwood from 1916 until her death.

Edith 'Edy' Craig, like her younger brother Edward, was illegitimate, as her mother, Ellen Terry, was still married to her first husband George Frederic Watts when she eloped with Godwin in 1868. Edith Craig was born the following year at Gusterwoods Common in Hertfordshire, and was given the surname 'Craig' to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. The family lived in Fallows Green, Harpenden in Hertfordshire, designed by Godwin, until 1874. The couple separated in 1875. In 1877 Terry married her second husband, Charles Wardell, an actor with the stage name Charles Kelly with whom she had worked, became a father figure for the children leading to Craig taking the name Wardell. However, in 1907 Terry married her third husband, James Carew, whom Edith Craig did not like.

Craig was educated at Mrs Cole's school, a co-educational institution in Earls Court in London, and at the Royal Academy of Music. Craig made her first appearance on the stage in 1878 during the run of Olivia at the Royal Court Theatre. She trained as a pianist under Alexis Hollander in Berlin in Germany from 1887 to 1890. She also occasionally studied under Elizabeth Malleson of Dixton Manor Hall, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, one of the pioneers of Women's Suffrage.

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