Gwladys Evan Morris (7 June 1879 – 6 March 1957) was a Welsh stage actress and writer.

Acting career

Morris was born in Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales.''England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915'' Her acting career began in 1903, when she went on a tour to the West Indies and India with Frank Benson's company. She also travelled to the United States, Ireland, Nova Scotia, and New Zealand. She mainly acted in plays by George Bernard Shaw, whom she greatly admired. From 1916 to 1920, she appeared in Shakespearean plays with the

Henry Jewett Players The Henry Jewett Players (c.1910s–1930s) was a repertory theatre troupe established by actor Henry Jewett in Boston, Massachusetts. The group operated from the Boston Opera House (c.1915); the Toy Theatre and Copley Theatre on Dartmouth Street (c ...

, and then in London theatres from 1920 on. In 1929, Morris toured with the Macdona Company. In 1931, she played Vera Lyndon in ''Strange Orchestra'' at the Embassy Theatre, and in 1937 was in ''After October'' at the Criterion Theatre and the Aldwych Theatre. She retired in 1939.

Writing career

She wrote ''Tales from Bernard Shaw,'' which was first published in 1929 by

George G. Harrap and Co. George G. Harrap, Ltd (officially: George G. Harrap and Company Limited, London, Bombay) is a now defunct publisher of high quality speciality books, many of them educational, such as the memoirs of Winston Churchill, or highly illustrated with ...

of London, and was printed by H & J Pillans & Wilson of Edinburgh. A U.S. edition was published in 1929 by

Frederick A. Stokes Frederick Abbott Stokes (November 4, 1857 – November 15, 1939) was an American publisher, founder and long-time head of the eponymous Frederick A. Stokes Company. Biography Stokes graduated from Yale Law School in 1879. He worked at Dodd, Mea ...

of New York. In the introduction to the book, Morris explains that the character of Jack (a chattering monkey in her story of '' Man and Superman'') is Shaw himself, and that the woman's part in another of her stories ('' Captain Brassbound's Conversion'') is written "expressly for and round the personality of Ellen Terry", a famous actress of the day who had died, a year before publication, in 1928.

Bibliography

*''Tales from Bernard Shaw''. (1929)

References

1879 births 1957 deaths 19th-century Welsh people 19th-century Welsh actresses 20th-century Welsh actresses 20th-century Welsh writers 20th-century Welsh women writers Welsh stage actresses People from Wrexham 19th-century Welsh women writers {{Wales-actor-stub