Hannah Cowley, playwright, lived at 10 Bridge Street, Tiverton. She has been born here, in 1743, and returned to the village in her retirement. She enjoyed much popularity in her lifetime, with her three major plays being performed regularly in London and at the twin Theatre Royals in Bristol and Bath. These plays focus mainly on marriage and how women strive to overcome the injustices imposed by family life and social custom.The production of Albina generated public controversy for Cowley. At the same time this play was bouncing between Drury Lane and Covent Garden, writer Hannah More's plays Percy (1777) and The Fatal Falsehood (1779) opened at Covent Garden. If Percy aroused Cowley's suspicions, Fatal Falsehood confirmed Cowley's them: More plagiarised from Albina.
As Cowley later wrote in her preface to the printed edition of Albina, hers and More's plays have ‘wonderful resemblances.’ Fatal Falsehood’s opening on 6 May 1779, was followed by charges in the press that More stole her ideas from Cowley. On 10 August, More wrote to the St. James Chronicle to protest that she ‘never saw, heard, or read, a single line of Mrs. Cowley’s Tragedy.’ In her preface to Albina, Cowley admits that the theatre managers, who in those days also acted as script editors, may have inadvertently given More her ideas.