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Josephine Preston Peabody

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Josephine Preston Peabody
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"The Journey": illustration by Elizabeth Shippen Green for a series of poems by Josephine Preston Peabody, entitled "The Little Past", which relate experiences of childhood from a child's perspective. Poems and illustration were published in Harper's Magazine, December 1903.

Josephine Preston Peabody (May 30, 1874 – December 4, 1922) was an American poet and dramatist.

Biography

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Peabody was born in New York and educated at the Girls' Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College. She also participated in George Pierce Baker's Harvard Workshop 47.[1][2]

In 1898, she was introduced to fifteen-year-old Khalil Gibran by Fred Holland Day, the American photographer and co-founder of the Copeland-Day publishing house, at an art exhibition. Shortly thereafter Gibran returned to Lebanon but the pair continued to correspond.[3]

From 1901 to 1903, she was instructor in English at Wellesley. The Stratford-on-Avon prize went to her in 1909 for her drama The Piper, which was produced in England in 1910; and in America at the New Theatre, New York City, in 1911. Composer Grace Chadbourne used Peabody's text for her songs "Green Singing Book" and "Window Pane Songs".[4][5]

On June 21, 1906 she married Lionel Simeon Marks, a British engineer and professor at Harvard University. They had a daughter, Alison Peabody Marks (July 30, 1908 – April 7, 2008), and a son, Lionel Peabody Marks (February 10, 1910 - January 25, 1984).[6][7][8]

Selected works

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  • Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew (1897)
  • The Wayfarers: A Book of Verse (1898)
  • Fortune and Men's Eyes: New Poems, with a Play (1900)
  • In the Silence (1900)
  • Marlowe (her first play),[9]
  • The Singing Leaves; a book of songs and spells (1903)
  • The Wings (1905), a drama
  • The Book of the Little Past (1908)
  • The Piper: A Play in Four Acts (1909)
  • The Singing Man (1911), poems
  • The Wolf of Gubbio (1913)
  • New Poems (1915)

References

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  1. ^ "Peabody, Josephine Preston, 1874-1922. Letters to George Pierce Baker, 1901-1909., 1901-1909". Harvard University: Hollis for Archival Discovery.
  2. ^ "Josephine P. Peabody, Noted Author, Dies at 45". New York Tribune. 5 December 1922.
  3. ^ Gibran, Jean (1998). Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World. Interlink Books. ISBN 156656249X.
  4. ^ The Delineator. Butterick Publishing Company. 1913.
  5. ^ Office, Library of Congress Copyright (1914). Catalog of Copyright Entries. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  6. ^ Woman's who's who of America, 1914–15. p. 540. wikisource.org
  7. ^ Lionel Simon Marks. findagrave.com
  8. ^ Lionel P. Marks Obituary. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/27/obituaries/lionel-p-marks.html. nytimes.com
  9. ^ "Modern Miracle Play Verse". The Independent. Jul 6, 1914. Retrieved July 28, 2012.
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