Mary Davys


Life
1674-1732 [vars. 1670; 1734]; b. Dublin, m. Rev. Peter Davys, Head of St Patrick’s Cathedral Grammar School, Dublin; friend and correspondent of Swift - who thought that Davys had married ‘very indiscreetly’; moved to London on her husband’s death, Nov. 1698; wrote works incl. The Amours of Alcippus and Leucippe (1704), before moving to York; there wrote The Merry Wanderer (1725), an account of her travels in England and Wales, illustrating contemporary opinions of the Irish; wrote The Northern Heiress, or Humours of York (April 1716, Lincoln Inns Field Th.), a social comedy which enjoyed a success in London where she moved to launch it; wrote The Self-Rival, but failed to gain performance; left London for Cambridge and opened a coffee house and enjoyed popularity with students of St. John’s Coll.; published The Reform’d Coquet (1724), a novel, with subscriptions from Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Bishop Burnet, et al.;
 
issued her own The Works of Mrs. Davys (1725) in 2 vols., printed by subscription and containing Familiar Letters Betwixt A Gentleman and A Lady (1725) - an epistolary novel of 22 letters between Berina and Artlander exchanging news and views, debating Tory-Whig politics and denouncing folly; also other upublished works incl. her The Self-Rival - which she claim prefatorily should have been produced at that Theatre Royal (Drury Lane); issued The Accomplish’d Rake (1727), a novel, and  afterwards The False Friend, or The Treacherous Portuguese (1732), thought to be written much earlier (i.e., 1700); suffered blindness and palsy in later years and lived in some poverty but sent £5 to St. Patrick’, Dublin, for the purchase of an Oxford Bible in 1732; d. 3 Jul. and bur. Holy Sepulchre [church], Cambridge. RR ODNB PI ATT RIA

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Works
Original
  • [as anon.,] The Fugitive: Containing Several Very Pleasant Passages Observ’d by a Lady in Her Country Ramble (London 1705); reworked as The Merry Wanderer (1725).
  • The Northern Heiress: or, Humours of York, A Comedy, as it was acted at the New Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields (London: H. Meere [for others] 1716) [details], and Do. [digital facs.] (Michigan: Thomson Gale 2003).
  • The Reform’d Coquet: A Novel by Mrs. Davys (London: H. Woodfall MDCCXIV [1724]), xvi, 171pp.; Do. [new edns.] (4th edn., corr. 1736; another edn. 1752; another edn. 1760) [details].
  • [anon.,] The Accomplish’d Rake: or, Modern Fine Gentleman, Being an Exact Description of the Conduct and Behaviour of a Person of Distinction (London 1727, 1756), [details].
  • The False Friend; or, The Treacherous Portugueze; A Novel Interspersed with the Adventures of Lorenzo and Elvira, Carlos and Leonora, Octavio and Clara; Written by a Lady (London: printed for T. Astley, 1732), [12], 136p., 12°.
Collected works (pub. by the author)
  • The Works of Mary Davys, Consisting of Plays, Novels, Poems, and Familiar Letters, Several of which never before publish’d (London: H. Woodfall 1725), and Do. [rep. edn.], ed. Robert A. Day (NY: Kraus 1955, 1967) [see contents].
Rep. collections
  • The Accomplish’d Rake: or, modern fine gentleman, in Four before Richardson: Selected English Novels, 1720-1727 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), xxxv, 373pp. [with “Luck At Last, or The Happy Unfortunate”, by A. Blackamore; “The Jamaica Lady, or The Life of Bavia”, by W.P.; “Philidore and Placentia, or L’amour trop délicat”, by E. Haywood]
  • Josephine Grieder, ed. & intro., The Reform’d Coquet [and] Familiar Letters Betwixt A Gentleman and A Lady, by Mary Davys [with The Mercenary Lover by Eliza Haywood] (NY & London: Garland 1973) [see details].
  • Martha F. Bowden, ed., The Reform’d Coquet, or, Memoirs of Amoranda; Familiar Letters Betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady; The Accomplish’d Rake; or, Modern Fine Gentleman [Eighteenth-century novels by women ser.] (Kentucky UP 1999), xlviii, 253pp. [Bibl. p.251.]
 

See also “The Merry Wanderer” [extract], in The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001, ed. Liam Harte (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2009) [q.pp.]
 

Note: she is the earliest author selected in Liam Harte, ed., The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001 (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2009) [see reviewed by Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times, 25 April 2009, Weekend].

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Bibliographical details
The Accomplish’d Rake: or, modern fine gentleman, being an exact description of the conduct and behaviour of a person of distinction ([London]: Printed in the year MDCCXXVII [1727]and sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster), vi, [2], 196p., 12° [ESTC N014929]; Do. [2nd edn., as] The Accomplish’d Rake: or, the modern fine gentleman. Being the genuine memoirs of a certain person of distinction (London: printed for A. Stephens; F. Noble; W. Bathoe; and J. Noble, 1756), [6], 255, [1]pp., 12° [ded. signed Mary Davys; ESTC T119331].

The Reform’d Coquet: A Novel by Mrs. Davys, author of The Humours of York (London: printed by H. Woodfall, for the author; and sold by J. Stephens, at the Bible in Butcher-Row, near St. Clement’s Church, M.DCC.XXIV. [1724]), xvi, 171, [1]pp., 12° [ded. signed Mary Davys], Do. [another edn. as] The reform’d coquet; or, Memoirs of Amoranda - A Novel by Mrs. Davys, author of The Humours of York [5th Edn.] (London : printed for A. Stephens 1744), [2], x, 154, [2]pp., 12°; Do. [digital facs. in ] (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications Inc. 1986) [Eighteenth Century, Reel 5770, no. 08]; fourth edn. [corr.] (London: printed by T. Forbes, for J. Stephens, 1736), vi, [2], 147,[1]p., 8°. [ESTC N022162]; Do. [5th edn. (London: printed for A. Stephens, at the Bible, in Butcher-Row, without Temple-Bar, MDCCXLIV [1744]), [2], x, 154, [2]pp. [ESTC N22163]; Do. [edn.] (London: A. Stephens 1752), 154pp.; Do. [7th edn.] (London: printed for W. Cater, M. Cooper and G. Woodfall 1760), x, [2], 154p., 12°.

Also published in Dublin as The Reform’d Coquet: or, Memoirs of Amoranda, A Surprising Novel (Dublin: printed by M. Rhames, for R. Gunne, Bookseller in Capel St. 1735), v, [3], 99, [1]p., 12°, and Do. [facs. rep.] in The Eighteenth Century, Reel 5770, No. 07 [35mm. microfilm; ESTC T008503]; another edn. (Dublin: printed for John Murphy and Benjamin Gunne 1763), 99,[1]p., 12° [ESTC T168793]. Note: see also The Reformed Coquette, or, a Fluttering Heart Caught at Last, in Paul and Virginia by Bernardin de Saint Pierre [1787] (1850), pp.133-249.

The Works of Mrs Davys: Consisting of Plays, Novels, Poems, and Familiar Letters, several of which never before publish'd, In two volumes (London: Printed by H. Woodfall at Elzevir’s-Head without Temple-Bar for the author, M.DCC.XXV. [1725]), 8°. CONTENTS: Vol. 1: I. The Self-Rival, A Comedy; II. The Northern Heiress; or Humours of York, A Comedy [pp.73-157]; III. The Merry Wanderer; IV. The Modern Poet. [Query Contents of Vol. 2.]

Familiar Letters Betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady, ed. & intro. by Robert A. Day, with a bibliography of epistolary fiction, 1660-1740 ([Augustan Reprint Soc., 54] (NY: Kraus Reprint 1967), iv, 10 [Bibl.], 265-308pp. [rep. from of 1955 edition of works issued by William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California at Los Angeles, 1955 - itself repro. from volume in Houghton Library, Harvard U.] See also .

The Northern Heiress: or, Humours of York, A Comedy, as it was acted at the New Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields (London: Printed by H. Meere, for A. Bettesworth in Pater-Noster-Row, and J. Browne and W. Mears both without Temple-Bar, 1716), [8], 9-72pp., 12° [front. ill. by Edward Kirkall showing ladies and a gentleman at table; York Minster edn. has signature of Robt. Davies on front flyleaf].

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References
Peter Kavanagh, Irish Theatre (Tralee 1946), gives bio-details: fl.1756; a friend of Swift; The Northern Heiress or the Humours of York (Lincoln Inns Field, April 1716) [pub. 1725], here described as more a comedy of intrigue than of manners, with some sharp wit; and The Self Rival (1725), unacted.

Sin´e;ad Sturgeon, “Mary Davys”, in Dictionary of Irish Biography(RIA/Cambridge 2004): ‘[...] Little is known of her background, including her maiden name: she married the Rev. Peter Davys, headmaster of the free school of St Patrick’s cathedral and writer of a well-known grammar book, Adminiculum puerile, or, An help for school boys (1694). They had two daughters who died in infancy (1695, 1699). Although Jonathan Swift described her husband as “a man I loved very well, but marryd very indiscreetly”, the marriage appears to have been a happy one. Peter Davys died in November 1698 and, finding herself in straitened circumstances, Mary moved to London in 1700, where she tried to support herself by writing. [...]’ (Available - online.)

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Notes
W. J. McCormack, ed., Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee (OUP 1988), cites Davys (p.xxxvi, ftn.)

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