Farren, Elizabeth (1762–1829), countess of Derby and actress, was born 6 July 1762 either in Cork, Bath, or Southampton, to George Farren, surgeon and apothecary of Cork, and his wife Margaret (née Wright), daughter of a wealthy brewer in Liverpool who latterly fell on hard times. Her parents married c.1758 and resided in Cork, but George Farren's hard drinking impoverished the family, so they turned to acting. However, when George, who was often drunk on stage, died as the result of alcoholism c.1770, Margaret was left to bring up her four young daughters alone. Two died young, and a third, Margaret, married Thomas Knight, also an actor, and was known professionally as Mrs Knight, but Elizabeth was to gain the most renown. In 1773 the family came under the management of James Whitely and lived in Manchester where Farren sang entr'acte songs and appeared in pantomime. In 1774 they moved to the Theatre Royal, Liverpool, directed by Joseph Younger, where Walker's Hibernian Magazine (July 1794) reported that on her arrival the other actresses had to club together to buy her clothes to perform her first role as Rosetta in Isaac Bickerstaffe's ‘Love in a village’ (1764). Until 1777 she acted in Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester before her first appearance at the Haymarket Theatre, London (9 June 1777), as Miss Hardcastle in ‘She stoops to conquer’ by Oliver Goldsmith (qv). A critic remarked: ‘Her person is genteel and above the middle stature; her countenance full of sensibility and capable of expression; her voice clear, but rather sharp, and not sufficiently varied’ (Hull, 1797, 18).
She returned to the north but made a second appearance at the Haymarket in the summer of 1778, and by the autumn of that year, aged only 16, was appearing at Covent Garden (from 23 September) and Drury Lane (from 8 October). She remained at Drury Lane but also appeared at the Haymarket with brief tours to Leeds (1787), York (1785, 1795), Dublin (1784–5, 1789, 1794) and Cork (1794), for seventeen years before her retirement, playing roles that included Berinthia in ‘A trip to Scarborough’ (1777) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (qv), Belinda in ‘All in the wrong’ (1761) by Arthur Murphy (qv), Olivia in William Shakespeare's ‘Twelfth night’ (1601). Her most famous role was Lady Townly in Colley Cibber's ‘The provoked husband’ (1731), one of the most demanding roles for eighteenth-century actresses, centring on a newly married wife who arrives in town and proceeds to spend vast quantities of money against her husband's wishes.
At the height of her career (1789–90) she was earning £17 per week and also received £300 each season in lieu of a benefit performance. When she appeared in Cork in October 1794 she was paid £50, and was engaged in Dublin in July of that year at £500 for twelve nights. This level of payment remained consistent until her retirement in 1797. In her performances she was sometimes accused of affectation and of ‘simp'ring and leering on the side-box rows’ (Leigh, 1785, 37). It has been suggested that she played to the galleries of aristocrats who perhaps wanted better examples of themselves than their own women could provide. By 1794 she had a house near Grosvenor Square, kept a carriage and mixed with the beau monde, but not without a ‘share of hauteur’ (Walker's Hibernian Magazine, July 1794, 2). Horace Walpole described her as ‘the first of all actresses’ (Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory, 12 December 1786 (Lewis, 1965, xxxiii, 544)) and for a time she was admired by Charles James Fox.
Her entry into high society was facilitated by her role as Miss Loveless in the first London performance of ‘The miniature picture’ by Elizabeth, Lady Craven, on 24 May 1780, when she met the prince of Wales, the duchesses of Devonshire and Richmond, Lady Harcourt, and other females of rank. The retirement in 1782 of London's other leading actress, Mrs Abington, further opened her way to being an aristocratic favourite. In the early 1780s Emily Fitzgerald (qv), duchess of Leinster, introduced her to Edward Stanley, 12th earl of Derby (1752–1834), and by 1785 they were having an affair, although his first wife was still living. To her credit Farren behaved with discretion and, at a time when actresses were surrounded by infamy, never attracted scandal. The couple rarely ventured out in public unless in the company of Farren's mother, but Derby's attentions were so marked that ‘as constant as Lord Derby’ became a by-word of the day.
By the late 1780s she supervised amateur dramatics at the duke of Richmond's home at Whitehall, and when Thomas Lawrence exhibited a whole-length portrait of her at the Royal Academy in 1790, it immediately became the picture of the year and is still acknowledged as one of his masterpieces. It was engraved and had an enormous sale, although Farren was annoyed that it appeared in the catalogue as ‘Portrait of an actress’ rather than ‘Portrait of a lady’. Two years later Derby paid 100 guineas (£105) for it, and on receipt Farren wrote to Lawrence complaining he had made her look too thin.
Shortly after Derby's first wife died on 14 March 1797, Farren announced her retirement and held her last performance as Lady Teazle in Sheridan's ‘School for scandal’ at Drury Lane 8 April 1797. The theatre was filled with 3,656 people paying a total of £728.14s.6d. for her emotional farewell. The couple married by special licence at the earl's home in Grosvenor Square, 1 May 1797. She was quickly accepted into aristocratic circles and was one of the ladies chosen by Queen Charlotte to walk in the procession at the marriage of the princess royal to the prince of Württemberg, 17 May 1797. She had three children, Lucy (d. 1809, aged 10), James (d. 1817, aged 17), and Mary (1801–58), who married the earl of Wilton in 1821. Farren died after a long illness at Knowsley Park, Lancashire, 23 April 1829, and was buried in the Derby family vault at Ormskirk parish church. The earl died 21 October 1834.