Elizabeth Craven

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Elizabeth Craven (17 December 1750 - 13 January 1828, née Lady Elizabeth Berkeley), Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth, was a writer and a socialite, perhaps best know for her travel writing. She was the third child of the 4th Earl of Berkeley.

Early in her career she wrote a number of light farces, pantomimes, and fables, many of which were performed in London to no great acclaim. She knew Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, and became a close friend of Horace Walpole, who published her early works. Her life was full of scandal: after sixteen years of marriage, six children, and affairs reported on both sides, she and her first husband, William Craven (6th Baron Craven after 1769), decided to part in 1783. After her separation she lived in France and travelled extensively on the Continent. For a number of years she was in a relationship with Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. Shortly after her husbands's death in 1791 they married in Lisbon, Portugal. They settled in England and while the Margravine was snubbed by ladies mindful of their reputations and by George III himself, the couple lived a busy and opulent life in Hammersmith, London and Benham Castle near Speen in Berkshire.

After the Margrave's death in 1806 she moved back to the Continent, to Naples, where she died and was buried in 1828. Her links with the Hammersmith area are commemorated in the name of two roads in the area - Margravine Gardens and Margravine Road.

[edit] Works

The Sleep-Walker (trans. of Pont de Vile's comedy La somnambule, 1778)
Modern Anecdotes of the Ancient Family of the Kinkvervankotsdarsprakengotchderns (satire, 1779)
The Miniature Picture (play, 1781)
A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (travel writing, 1789)
The Georgian Princess (produced 1798; published 1799). Ed. with an introduction by John Franceschina. British Women Playwrights around 1800. 15 January 2001.
Letters from the Right Honorable Lady Craven, to his serene highness the margrave of Anspach, during her travels through France, Germany, and Russia in 1785 and 1786 (travel writing, 1814)
Memoirs (1826)