Curzon was born
Sarah Anne Vincent in
Birmingham,
England, the daughter of George Philips Vincent, a wealthy glass manufacturer, and his wife. In 1881 she became the associate editor of the
Canada Citizen, Canada's first
prohibitionist paper, where she wrote a regular column on women's issues.
The Canada Citizen boasted the first
women's page to cover the issues of women's suffrage and access to postsecondary education. The one-act vignette was solicited by
John Wilson Bengough, editor of the satirical magazine
Grip, and printed in its first annual
The Grip-Sack. It deals with a woman who poses as a man to get a higher education, and graduates with top honors. It may have inspired the attempt by Emma Stanton Mellish six months later to enroll in
Trinity College under a male name. It likely helped provoke the provincial
Order in Council of October 2, 1884, that admitted women to
University College. Curzon supported the efforts of Dr. Emily Stowe to found the Women’s Medical College in Toronto (now
Women's College Hospital), which opened in 1883. Curzon suffered from
Bright's Disease, and in 1884 she had to leave her position at
The Canada Citizen due to complications related to the disease.
Laura Secord . Photo by Dickbauch. Curzon's verse drama,
Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812, a tribute to
Laura Secord's heroism in the
War of 1812, was published in 1887. According to its preface, the play was written to solicit recognition for
Laura Secord's contribution to the victory of the
Battle of Beaver Dams: "to rescue from oblivion the name of a brave woman, and set it in its proper place among the heroes of Canadian history." The preface called for a fundraising campaign to build a monument to Secord. It was also an intervention into the debate over pensioning the veterans of that war.
The Week called
Laura Secord "a dramatic poem of much strength” and praised "Mrs. Curzon’s conscientious researches, and her efforts in providing something for her Canadian public which shall possess a lasting and tangible value".
William Douw Lighthall praised
Laura Secord as “a sound true book” and dubbed Curzon "the Loyalist Poetess". The play sparked tremendous interest in its subject, causing "a deluge of articles and entries on Secord that filled Canadian histories and school textbooks at the turn of the 20th century". In 1895, Curzon co-founded the Women’s Canadian Historical Society in Toronto with feminist Mary Anne Fitzgibbon, Lady
Matilda Edgar, and others. Curzon was elected the society's first president. She was also an honorary member of the Lundy’s Lane Historical Association, the York Pioneer and Historical Society, and the Women’s Art Association of Canada. Sarah Anne Curzon's daughter was one of the first females to receive a
B.A. degree from the
University of Toronto. Curzon's correspondence indicates that her husband died in 1894. She died in 1898, in Toronto, from Bright's Disease. She is buried in Toronto's
Mount Pleasant Cemetery. ==Publications==