Amy Coleridge (25 May 1864 4 August 1951) was a British actress who had a successful career playing in Shakespeare's plays in South Africa as well as in her home country. She acted in the companies of Henry Irving and John Martin-Harvey.

She was born as Amy Matilda Cowlrick at St Pancras in London in 1864,[1] the daughter of Adelaide née Jackson (1839–) and Charles Cowlrick (1837–1922), a commercial clerk.

She married the English actor William Haviland in Chicago on 1 February 1884. They had two children, the actor Frederick Alexander Irwin (1884-1924) and Ellen Winifred Irwin (1887-) but were divorced in 1904 following her adultery with the actor Percy Anstey (1876–1920).[2] In 1886 she and her husband were at the Lyceum Theatre in the company of Henry Irving for whom she played Alice in Faust (1886),[3] Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing,[4] and Julie Lesurques in The Lyons Mail (1893).[5] She acted in The Lady of Lyons alongside her husband in John Martin-Harvey's Lyceum Theatre Company tour of the provinces in 1888.[6]

She and Haviland returned to South Africa as members of the Holloway Theatre Company in 1895 where she played Desdemona in Othello and Cordelia in King Lear on tour.[7] In 1897 she returned to tour South Africa with the Haviland and Lawrence Shakespearian & Dramatic Company in their season of Shakespearian plays directed by her husband William Haviland and co-starring Haviland and his co-manager Gerald Lawrence.

By 1900 she and her husband William Haviland were in London with the company of John Martin-Harvey, for whom she appeared as Marie in Louis XI at the Lyceum Theatre (1900),[8] joining him for his sixth tour of America in 1902 in three productions: A Cigarette Maker's Romance, The Children of Kings and The Only Way.[9][10][11] She appeared opposite Martin-Harvey as Margaret Hungerford in The Breed of the Treshams (1903).

In 1906, after her divorce from Haviland, she married the actor Percy Anstey.[12] After divorcing Anstey she married Archibald Brough Pearce (1897–1962) in 1915.[13] She is believed to have returned to South Africa to act for Leonard Rayne for some years, later becoming a speech and drama teacher.

Amy Coleridge died in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa on 4 August 1951.

References

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