Sarah Anne Curzon was one of the first English-Canadian playwrights to dramatize Canadian historical subject matter and public social issues of the day. Her drama Laura Secord, the Heroine of 1812 (1887) and the comedy The Sweet Girl Graduate (originally published in Grip-Sack in 1882) stand in marked contrast to the prevalent poetic dramas with non-Canadian settings, melodramas, parodies, burlesques, comic operettas, and political satires of other nineteenth-century English-Canadian writers.

Curzon was born near Birmingham, England, in 1833. Her parents, Mary Jackson Vincent and George Phillips Vincent, a well-educated glass manufacturer, took a strong interest in the upbringing of their children. Curzon was educated in ladies' schools in Birmingham and studied music and languages with private tutors. Her lifelong preoccupation with literature, history, and politics was undoubtedly stimulated by her early family environment. In her youth she submitted poetry and stories to popular family periodicals. In 1858 Sarah Anne married Robert Curzon of...