1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Robins, Elizabeth

ROBINS, ELIZABETH (1865-), Anglo-American novelist and actress, was born at Louisville, Ky., Aug. 6 1865, and educated at Zanesville, O. She had had her early training as an actress in America with the Boston Museum stock company, and afterwards with Edwin Booth. Coming to London she first appeared in The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1889, and between 1890 and 1896 she played in most of Ibsen's plays, in which she established her position on the stage. In 1902 she was Lucrezia in Stephen Phillips's Paolo and Francesca at the St. James's theatre, London. Her first novels, George Mandeville's Husband (1894), The New Moon (1895) and Below the Salt (1896), appeared over the pseudonym of C. E. Raimond, but in 1898 the success of The Open Question led to her publishing in her own name, her reputation as a writer being maintained in The Magnetic North (1904); A Dark Lantern (1905); Come and Find Me (1908); Camilla (1918) and The Messenger (1920). She took an active part in the agitation for woman suffrage. Her play Votes for Women was acted at the Court theatre, London, in 1907.