Robins, Elizabeth

(1862-1952)

   Born in Louisville, Kentucky, actress Elizabeth Robins debuted at the Boston Museum in 1885, after which she toured with several stars, including Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, and James O'Neill. She married actor George Richmond Parks in 1885, but he killed himself two years later. Her staunch feminism was kindled when she visited London in 1889, remaining there in order to act in Henrik Ibsen's plays, including productions of The Pillars of Society (1889), A Doll's House (1891), Hedda Gabler (1891), The Master Builder (1893), Brand (1893), Rosmersholm (1893), Little Eyolf (1896), and John Gabriel Borkman (1897). She was closely identified with Ibsen's plays, but in the United States, aside from appearing as Hedda Gabler at the play's American premiere in 1898, she was not seen in Ibsen's work. Robins retired from acting in 1902, but her interest in Ibsen continued. In 1928, she wrote her reflections on his plays in Ibsen and the Actress, and referred to his work in other books including Theatre and Friendship (1932) and Both Sides of the Curtain (1940). An accomplished writer, she wrote novels under the pseudonym C. E. Raemond and wrote one of the definitive "suffragette" plays, Votes for Women (1907), which played 16 performances in New York in 1909, and a novel on the same subject, The Convert (1907).