JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

BELATED BIRTHDAY WISHES
JOSEPHINE PEABODY PRESTON
(May 30, 1874 - December 4, 1922)

An advocate for women's suffrage and pacifism

Born in Brooklyn, New York her parents devoted themselves to developing her artistic sensibilities, painting and reading books by the best authors. They were devoted theatregoers and discussed the productions with their children. Their father, a merchant who had memorized much of Shakespeare, led the family's favorite before-bedtime activity; acting out scenes from great plays.

After the loss of her father and a younger sister she was forced to lived with her maternal grandmother in Dorchester, MA.  It was a period of such loneliness for her that she started writing poetry and by the
age of 14 had published seven poems in such magazines in The Woman's Journal.

A long correspondence with Horace Scudder, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly (which had published one of her poems in 1894) enabled her to get a philanthropist to support her as a special student at Radcliffe College. Five volumes of poetry and her one-act play Fortune and Men's Eyes (1900) were published. Marlowe, her first full-length play, inspired by her scholarly interest in the English Renaissance, published in 1901 was produced at Radcliffe College in 1905 starring George Pierce Baker.

In spite of long periods of illness in the last years of her life she wasn't deterred from taking part in liberal reform movements.

Her most memorable achievement was winning the $1,500 Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare Memorial Prize in 1910 for her poetic drama The Piper.  After futile attempts to find an American producer, she heard about a competition for plays in English, prose or poetry, set in any period before 1800.  She was one of two finalists. She learned of her triumph on her son's one-month birthday. Her subsequent diary entries included..."Tis much like waking up and finding one's self famous. A dizzying dream." "And still it keeps on--this delicious unhoped-for thing that people and papers take it as an honor for the country, and a Banner for the cause of womankind.  Oh--Oh--and I wanted to be something or
other for these in some manner, some day!"

Soft-spoken and graceful of manner, she always looked younger than her years; she was often likened to a Dresden china figurine because of her pale complexion and dainty appearance.