Eliza O'Flaherty

Eliza O'Flaherty (1818 – 2 December 1882) née Winstanley, was an Australian writer and stage actress.

O'Flaherty was born in England as the daughter of William Winstanley and Eliza Finch, and emigrated to Australia with her family in 1833. She debuted at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, on 31 October 1834: this was the first theatre in Australia, newly opened, and she would thereby have belonged to the very first women active as professional actors in Australia. Her father was a decorator at the theatre, and her sister Ann was engaged as singer and dancer.

She married a theatre colleague, the actor Henry Charles O'Flaherty (d. 1854), in 1841. She managed the Olympic Theatre in Sydney with her spouse in 1842, where she caused a scandal by playing Richard III; at the time, women playing men's roles was not common in Australia, where theatre in itself had only recently been introduced.

O'Flaherty left Australia for England in 1846, where she enjoyed a successful acting career, performing privately for Queen Victoria on several occasions. She also toured the United States. She has been referred to as the first Australian actor to have an international career. She joined Charles Kean's London company in 1850.

Towards the end of her acting career, O'Flaherty started a new career as a writer, and by 1864 she had given up the stage entirely. She returned to Australia around 1880 and died in Sydney.^[1]

Works

(anon.) Lucy Cooper, 1854
Shifting Scenes in Theatrical Life, 1859.
(as Ariele) Bitter-Sweet—So is the World, 1860.
Margaret Falconer, 1860.
Twenty Straws, London, 1864.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) The Mistress of Hawk's Crag, 1864.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Voices From the Lumber Room, 1865.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) The Humming Bird, 1865-66.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Desmond, or the Red Hand, 1866.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) The Cockletop, 1866.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Carynthia, a Legend of Black Rock, 1866-67.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) What Is To Be Will Be, London, 1867.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Who Did It?, 1867
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) The Queen of Clitherly, 1867.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Astrutha, an Irish Story, 1867.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Entrances and Exits, 1868.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) For Her Natural Life: A Tale of 1830, 1876.
(as Mrs Eliza Winstanley) Imogen Hubert, 1876.

References

↑ Adelaide, Debra (1988). Australian women writers: a bibliographic guide. Pandora. ISBN 978-0-86358-148-9.

N. M. Robinson, O'Flaherty, Eliza (1818–1882), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 18 August 2017.

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[Adelaide1988-1] Adelaide, Debra (1988). Australian women writers: a bibliographic guide. Pandora. ISBN 978-0-86358-148-9.