Rose Leclercq

Rose Leclercq (2 February 1843 – 2 April 1899) was an English actress, possibly best known for creating the role of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895.

Over the next twenty years she appeared in new and classic roles, the latter including Olivia in Twelfth Night with Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

Her roles in new plays included Marie Leczinska in W. G. Wills's The Pompadour (1888), and Lady Wargrave in Sydney Grundy's The New Woman towards the end of 1894.

She played this part from October 1898 to March the following year, when she was taken ill.[1] Leclercq died from influenza and bronchial pneumonia at her home in Chelsea, at the age of 56.

[1] In a biographical article written two years after her death the critic Joseph Knight wrote, "Rose Leclercq in her later days had a matchless delivery, and was the best, and almost the only, representative of the grand style in comedy.