Annie Horniman

All you want to know about Annie Horniman

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH (3 October 1860 – 6 August 1937) was a member of the Horniman Tea family. She founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, which was the first regional repertory theatre in the country.

As a result of her tea connection, she was known to all as "Hornibags". She held court at the Midland Hotel, wearing exotic clothing and openly smoking cigarettes, which was scandalous at the time. She introduced Manchester to what was called at the time "the play of ideas". The noted theatre critic James Agate noted that Horniman's high-minded theatrical ventures had an air of gloomy strenuousness about them. Tea money financed productions of Euripedes, Shaw, Galsworth, Masefield and Verhaeren. She supported the Manchester School of dramatists, headed by Allan Monkhouse and Stanley Houghton. ^[1]

Born in Lewisham, she was the eldest daughter of Frederick John Horniman who founded the Horniman Museum in London and the sister of Liberal MP Emslie Horniman. She was also an active member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, taking the motto of Soror F.e.R. expanding to "Fortiter et Recte" from the Latin meaning "Bravely and Justly". She died in Shere, Surrey in 1937.

The Papers of Annie Horniman are held in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester.^[2]

References

^ Agate. A Biography, James Harding, Methuen London, 1986.
^ "The Annie Horniman Papers". London Metropolitan University. Retrieved on 17 November 2008.