Campbell, Mrs. Patrick

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick (1865-1940), was a British stage actress. She was a witty, temperamental performer, who specialized in playing women with a socially improper past. In 1886, Campbell made her stage debut in London and established her career in 1893 as the title character in Sir Arthur Wing Pinero‘s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. She also starred in Pinero’s The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith (1895). She acted in Shakespearean roles with the famous British actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. George Bernard Shaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion especially for her. Selections of Campbell’s correspondence with Shaw were published in Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence (1952).

Campbell was born in London on Feb. 9, 1865. Her given and family name was Beatrice Stella Tanner. She married Patrick Campbell in 1884. She wrote an autobiography, My Life and Some Letters (1922). Mrs. Campbell died on April 9, 1940.