FASHION
Fashion, while not our first dramatic social satire, for that honor belongs to The Contrast, is of special interest as inspiring a series of plays dealing with the follies of those who aspire to secure an assured position without being aware of social values. The best of this later series is Nature's Nobleman, by Henry O. Pardey, (1851), for Mrs. Bateman's Self, (1856), E. G. Wilkins' Young New York, (1856), and Cornelius Mathews' False Pretences, or Both Sides of Good Society (1856) are merely caricature.
Anna Cora Ogden, the author of Fashion, was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1819, the daughter of Samuel G. Ogden, of New York, who was tried and acquitted for complicity in the Miranda expedition to liberate South America. She was interested in the stage from childhood, taking the part of a judge in a French version of Othello when she was five years of age. At fourteen she had put on an English translation of Voltaire's Alzire at her home in Flatbush. She married James Mowatt, a barrister in New York, when she was fifteen. At sixteen she published her first literary venture, a poetical romance, Pelayo or the Cavern of Covadonga. Being threatened with tuberculosis of the lungs, she took a sea voyage and went to London and to Hamburg, and later to Paris, where she saw Rachel act, and where she wrote Gulzara or the Persian Star, a play in six acts which was acted afterwards at her home in Flatbush by her sisters, and on two other occasions, at least. It was published in the New World in 1840. Mr. Mowatt lost his fortune and Mrs. Mowatt began to give public readings with considerable success. Notwithstanding her constant struggle against ill health, she wrote copiously for the leading magazines, sometimes contributing several articles under different names to the same journal. Her novel of The Fortune Hunter (1842), had quite a wide sale and was translated into German. Her other novel, Evelyn, a domestic story, was published after her debut, in 1845.
Fashion was produced first at the Park Theatre, New York, March 24, 1845. An interesting account of its production is given in her Autobiography. It ran for three weeks and was withdrawn only owing to engagements of stars at the Park Theatre. It was played in Philadelphia at the Walnut Street Theatre while the New York engagement was on. The success of the play and also her financial necessities induced her to go on the stage and she made her debut at the Park Theatre as "Pauline" in the Lady of Lyons, on June 13, 1845. Her modest accounts of her stage beginning show that she made a success from the
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