Mary Darby Robinson

Mary Darby Robinson, widely known as Perdita, became one of the most visible women of late eighteenth-century Britain. After an early marriage and confinement with her husband in debtors’ prison, she built a career on the London stage.

Robinson later reinvented herself as a professional writer. She published poetry, novels, plays, journalism and political arguments, moving among figures such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her work addressed female independence, reputation and the unequal consequences of sexual scandal. Although illness and financial insecurity limited her life, she became an important transitional figure between Georgian theatrical culture and early Romantic literature.

In Sarah Gristwood’s Bird of Paradise, Mary Robinson moved through late Georgian society as actress, royal mistress, celebrity and professional writer. In Jean Plaidy’s Perdita’s Prince, Seventeen-year-old George, Prince of Wales, becomes infatuated with actress Mary Robinson after seeing her play Perdita on the London stage.