This study reveals in depth the lives and work of five little-known women dramatists: Martha Morton, 1865-1925, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, 1858-1934, Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, 1855-1908, Beulah Marie Dix, 1876-1970, and Rida Johnson Young, 1875-1926.  Entering playwriting at a time when very few women wrote for the stage, these pioneers achieved thriving careers and entertained theatergoers throughout the United States and Great Britain with their wholesome, light comedies, farces and musicals.  Their collective experience as professional dramatists reveals trends of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theatre practices and their accomplishments in a male-dominated profession serve to underscore hitherto unacknowledged contributions to America’s Progressive Era theatre.  

Praise

"This book provides a detailed account of the lives of five American women playwrights who were highly successful in their times but whose work remains largely unexplored and neglected. It adds an exploration of the area of theatre to our understanding of the opportunities available to the professional woman writer at the time. The greatest strength of the project is in the enormous amount of contemporary material Engle has discovered and drawn on in her accounts. A lucid and engaging study."-- Susan Croft, former Senior Curator at the Theater Museum; Author of She Also Wrote Plays: an International Guide to Women Playwrights

About the Author(s)

Sherry D. Engle

Sherry D. Engle is Associate Professor in the Speech, Communications and Theatre Arts Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She has published articles in the New England Theatre Journal and American Drama and presented numerous conference papers on early women playwrights. She lives in New York City and also writes plays.

Table of Contents

The proliferation of women dramatists during America’s Progressive Era *

Dean of women dramatists, Martha Morton, 1865-1925 : Plays of Martha Morton * English-American Success, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, 1858-1934 * Plays of Madeleine Lucette Ryley * Collaborators extraordinaire, Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, 1855-1908, and Beulah Marie Dix, 1875-1970: Plays of Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland and Beulah Marie Dix 1875-1970: Plays of Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland and Beulah Marie Dix * Dramatist, songwriter, and lyricist, Rida Johnson Young, 1875-1926: Plays and musicals of Rida Johnson Young * Early feminists: setting examples for future generations