31 Bedford St, London WC2E 9EH, UK

Edith Craig was born on December 9th, 1869 to parents Ellen Terry and Edward William Godwin. Her birth name was Edith Godwin, but legally changed it in 1883 to Edith Ailsa Craig. She was baptized Edith Ailsa Geraldine Craig in 1887 but known by her close circle of friends as Edy. Terry thought that Ailsa Craig was a good stage name after visiting an area of the Ayrshire coast that had that same name and decided that Edith should utilize it as a stage name. After her birth she lived for five years in a house at Harpenden that Godwin had designed for their little family. Craig was educated at a school in Earl’s court, that was ran by a lady named Mrs. Cole. Later on in life she attended Dixton Manor, ran by Mrs. Cole’s sister, Mrs. Mallson, who awakened Edith to the Suffragist movement from an early age. After that she attended the Royal Academy of Music and then went onto Berlin to train as a pianist.

Craig made her first stage appearance in 1878 but did not become a regular member of Henry Irving’s Lyceum until 1890. In the ten years following she played many small roles in Irving’s productions and also served as an actress for Mrs. Brown-Potter’s Independent Theatre troupe. It was also during this time that Craig began to increasingly take over managing her mother’s career. She would escort her to parties, dinners, and theatres, write letters on her mother’s behalf, and was in charge of managing Terry’s extensive fan base. In 1899 Terry purchased a farm that had three houses on the property, and invited Terry to move into one with partner’s Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood and Christopher St. John. All three were huge supporters of the Suffragist movement and their home seemed to serve as a sanctuary for other activists including Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, and Vita Sackville-West.

In 1911 Edith founded the Pioneer Players theatre society, which was heavily supported financially and emotionally by her mother. The Pioneer players produced roughly 150 innovative plays until 1920. In an annual report, Edy claimed, “our survival is determined by the number of people who believe that art is necessary to life at its fullest, that there is an art of the theatre, and that the worth experiments in it which have taken root should be jealously protected, since they are rare and slow growing plants not easily cultivated in this country” (Gandolfi 108). This Statement demonstrates her own rejection of mainstream Victorian culture and a resistance to what she described as a “khaki-clad and Khaki-minded world” (Gandolfi 108). Throughout her life Craig served as an actress, playwright, director, costume designer, manager, set-designer, and fearless suffragist. Craig died on March 27th, 1947.