Sarah Anne Curzon

Sarah Anne Curzon born Vincent (1833 – November 6, 1898) was a British-born Canadian poet, journalist, editor, and playwright who was one of "the first women's rights activists and supporters of liberal feminism" in Canada. During her lifetime, she was best known for her closet drama, Laura Secord: The Heroine of 1812, "one of the works that made Laura Secord a household name".

Life

Curzon was born Sarah Anne Vincent in Birmingham, England, the daughter of George Philips Vincent, a wealthy glass manufacturer, and his wife. As a girl she was educated by tutors and at private girls' schools, and contributed prose and verse to English magazines, notably London's Leisure Hour.

She married Robert Curzon in 1858, and the couple came to Canada between 1862 and 1864. Sarah Anne Curzon was a lifelong feminist. She was a founding member in November 1876 of the Toronto Women's Literary Club, which was based on the model of the American Society for the Advancement of Women. The club, whose founders also included Emily Stowe, "focused on advancing women’s rights, as well as literacy". Also in 1876, Curzon wrote what she called "Canada's first feminist play", the historical drama Laura Secord, but she could not get it published until 1887.

Curzon published "verse, essays, and fiction [in] the Canadian Monthly, the Dominion Illustrated, Grip, The Week, Evangelical Churchman, and the Canadian Magazine. She also published women's-suffrage articles in British and American newspapers." She was "a pioneer in educating readers... about female suffrage, property rights equal to men and access to higher education for women." She was a founding member of the Toronto Suffrage Association and its successor, the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, for which she also served as the recording secretary. In 1881 she became the associate editor of the Canada Citizen, Canada's first prohibitionist paper, where she wrote a regular column on women's issues. The Canada Citizen boasted the first women's page to cover the issues of women's suffrage and access to postsecondary education.