The voices of Ellen Courtenay- the life and work of Ellen Courtenay as Helen Steinberg- poet actress, appeal memoirist and lecturer

This thesis addresses the life and work of Ellen Courtenay (c.1803-1864) and argues - based on documentary evidence - that she did not die in 1837 as has been previously thought but is one and the same person as the itinerant lecturer and poet Madame Helene Steinberg. By connecting the career of Courtenay with that of Steinberg, the project offers a unique and unprecedented investigation of the ways in which a nineteenth-century woman writer and performer negotiated issues of identity, voice and public reputation