Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland

Elizabeth Tanfield was born in 1585 (or 1586) at Burford Priory in Oxfordshire, the only child of the lawyer Lawrence Tanfield, later Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. A great reader from childhood, she was married at about fifteen to Sir Henry Cary, who became Viscount Falkland in 1620.

Her tragedy The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry, drawn from the story of Herod and Mariamne in Josephus, was printed in 1613 over the initials “E. C.”. It is the first original tragedy in English known to have been published by a woman. It had probably circulated in manuscript among her friends for some years before it was printed.

In the 1620s she converted to Catholicism, a step that brought her into open conflict with her husband and with the Crown. She died in 1639; several of her children became Catholics, and one of her daughters later wrote her life.