Mary Anne Keeley

Mary Anne Keeley, née Goward (22 November 1805 – 12 March 1899) was an English actress and actor-manager.

In 1838 she made her first great success as Nydia, the blind girl, in a dramatized version of Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii, and followed this with an equally striking impersonation of Smike in Nicholas Nickleby.

In 1839 came her decisive triumph with her picturesque and spirited acting as the hero of a play founded upon Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard.

So dangerous was considered the popularity of the play, with its glorification of the prison-breaking felon, that the Lord Chamberlain ultimately forbade the performance of any piece upon the subject.

It is perhaps mainly as Jack Sheppard that Keeley lived in the memory of playgoers, despite her long subsequent career in plays more worthy of her remarkable gifts.