Brooke (née Moore), Frances

Frances Brooke (1724–1789) was a leading figure in London’s literary and theatrical worlds from the 1750s to the 1780s. Her career naturally divides in two: before 1770, her major achievements were in the field of the novel, with The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (1763) proving her most enduring success. After 1770, she was most notable for her involvement with the theatre, as the artistic director of the King’s Theatre from 1773 to 1778, and as the author of The Siege of Sinope (1781), Rosina (1782), and Marian (1788). Rosina, translated from Charles-Simon Favart’s Les moissonneurs (1768), and set to music by William Shield (1748–1829), proved Brooke’s greatest triumph, both in her lifetime and long after, and represents the most important contribution any female author made to the development of English opera in the Romantic era. Brooke is considered here primarily as a writer for the stage, her principal ambition even before 1770.