Zona Gale
| Zona Gale | |
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Portrait of Zona Gale by Alice Boughton
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| Born | August 26, 1874 Portage, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
Zona Gale (26 August 1874 – 27 December 1938) was an American author and playwright. She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.
Contents
Biography
Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing. She attended Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and later entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison, from which she received a Bachelor of Literature degree in 1895, and four years later a master's degree.
After college, Gale wrote for newspapers in Milwaukee and New York City, for six years. "A visit to Portage in 1903 proved a turning point in her literary life, as seeing the sights and sounds of town life led her to comment that her 'old world was full of new possibilities.' Gale had found the material she needed for her writing, and returned to Portage in 1904 to concentrate full time on fiction."[1] She wrote and published there until her 1938 death, but made trips to New York.[1]
She published her first novel, Romance Island, in 1906, and began the very popular series of "Friendship Village" stories. In 1920, she published the novel Miss Lulu Bett, which depicts life in the Midwestern United States. She adapted it as a play, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.[1]
"In addition to her fiction writing, Gale was an active supporter of the La Follettes (both Robert M. La Follettes, and Philip La Follette) and progressive causes. She was an active member of the National Women's Party, and she lobbied extensively for the 1921 Wisconsin Equal Rights Law."[1] In the same year, she attended the founding meeting (in New York) of the Lucy Stone League and became a member of its Executive Committee.[2] Her activism on behalf of women was her way to help solve "a problem she returned to repeatedly in her novels: women's frustration at their lack of opportunities."[1]
In 1928 at the age of fifty-four she married William L. Breese, also of Portage.
Gale died of pneumonia in a Chicago hospital in 1938.[3]
The house she built for her parents in Portage, now known as the Zona Gale House, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[4]
Bibliography
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Novels
- Romance Island (1906)
- Christmas: A Story (1912)
- Heart's Kindred (1915)
- A Daughter of the Morning (1917)
- Birth (1918)
- Miss Lulu Bett (1920)
- Faint Perfume (1923)
- Preface to Life (1926)
- Borgia (1929)
- Papa La Fleur (1933)
- Light Woman (1937)
- Magna (1939)
Short stories
- The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre (1907)
- Friendship Village (1908)
- Friendship Village Love Stories (1909)
- Mothers to Men (1911)
- When I Was a Little Girl (1913)
- Neighborhood Stories (1914)
- Peace in Friendship Village (1919)
- The Neighbors (1920)
- Yellow Gentians and Blue (1927)
- Bill (1927)
- Old-Fashioned Tales (1933)
Plays
- The Neighbors (1914) (in Wisconsin Plays, edited by T.H. Dickinson)
- Miss Lulu Bett (1920) (dramatization of her novel)
- Uncle Jimmy (1922)
- Mr. Pitt (1925)
- The Clouds (1932)
- Evening Clothes (1932)
- Faint Perfume (1934) (dramatization of her novel)
Poetry
- The Secret Way (1921)
Essays and non-fiction
- Civic Improvement in the Little Towns (1913) (pamphlet)
- What Women Won in Wisconsin (1922) (pamphlet)
- "The Novel of Tomorrow" (1922) (in The Novel of Tomorrow and the Scope of Fiction by Twelve American Novelists)
- Portage, Wisconsin and Other Essays (1928)
- Frank Miller of Mission Inn (biography) (1938)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/topics/gale/ Zona Gale's bio at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
- ↑ Stannard, Una (1977). Mrs Man. Germainbooks. ISBN 0-914142-02-X, p. 192.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Zona Gale |
- Zona Gale - bibliographical overview, links to works online
- [1] Obituary in Wisconsin State Journal, December 29, 1938.
- [2] An online (books.google.com) sourcebook (2000) listing and discussing the works of perhaps 50 American women writers, 1900–1945, including Zona Gale, and including their biographical information as well.
- Works by Zona Gale at Project Gutenberg
- Lua error in Module:Internet_Archive at line 573: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Works by Zona Gale at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Zona Gale at Internet Broadway Database(IBDb.com)
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- Articles with Internet Archive links
- 20th-century American novelists
- American women novelists
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners
- American women short story writers
- Writers from Wisconsin
- University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
- People from Portage, Wisconsin
- People from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin
- 1874 births
- 1938 deaths
- American women dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century women writers
- 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
- Women Pulitzer Prize winners
