Early Success
Born Hannah Parkhouse, she was the daughter of Hannah (née Richards) and Philip Parkhouse, a bookseller in Tiverton, Devon. Sources disagree about some details of her married life, citing her marriage date as either 1768 or 1772 (De la Mahotière, Mary. ". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.hil.unb.ca/view/article/6500. Retrieved 2006-10-14). and claiming she had either three or four children. Shortly after her marriage to Thomas Cowley, the couple moved to London, where Thomas worked as an official in the Stamp Office and as a part-time journalist.
The introduction to her 1813 collected works gives an account of how Cowley was struck by a sudden desire to write while attending a play with her husband. “So delighted with this?” she boasted to him. “Why I could write as well myself!” Thomas teased her, but by the middle of the next day Cowley showed him the first act of her comedy The Runaway. If the substance of the story is true, then this visit to the theatre could have occurred no later than 1775 because the rest of The Runaway was written, sent to well-known actor-manager David Garrick, and produced at Drury Lane theatre by 15 February 1776.
The Runaway enjoyed 17 performances during its first season at Drury Lane and 39 in London by 1800, a success that encouraged Cowley to write more, even though her mentor Garrick retired after the 1776 season. She wrote her next two plays, the farce Who’s the Dupe? and the tragedy Albina, before the year was out.
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