Dorothea Celesia

Dorothea Celesia (bap. 1738, died 1790) was a poet and playwright best known for Almida, her translation of Voltaire's Tancrède (1760).

She was the youngest child of David Mallet (ca. 1701–1765), playwright and poet, and his first wife, Susanna (d. 1742). She was educated at home, and in 1758 she married Pietro Paolo Celesia (d. 1806), Ambassador to England (1755 to 1759). She moved with her husband to Genoa in 1759 and remained there until her death. David Garrick visited her when in Italy and produced her blank verse tragedy, Almida, at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1771. The play had a successful run of ten nights and afforded Celesia with some short-lived celebrity. Her version is notable for its shift of focus from the warrior Tancred, as in Voltaire's original, to Almida, the heroine, and the latter's assertion of her right to choose her own spouse. Celesia's second major work was a long poem in blank verse, Indolence (1772). Her proposed translation of Voltaire's heroic tragedy Sémiramis (1746) never materialized.

Resources

Breen, Jennifer. "Celesia , Dorothea (bap. 1738, d. 1790)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 22 Jan. 2007.