Bronson Howard

Bronson Crocker Howard (October 7, 1842 – August 4, 1908) was an American dramatist.

Bronson Howard
A portrait of Bronson Howard
Born(1842-10-07)October 7, 1842
DiedAugust 4, 1908(1908-08-04) (aged 65)
NationalityAmerican
Howard's Shenandoah

Biography

Howard was born in Detroit where his father Charles Howard was Mayor in 1849.[1] He prepared for college at New Haven, Conn., but instead of entering Yale he turned to Journalism in New York. From 1867 to 1872 he worked on several newspapers, among them the Evening Mail and the Tribune. As early as 1864 he had written a dramatic piece (Fantine) which was played in Detroit. His first important play was Saratoga, produced by Augustin Daly in 1870. It was very successful and became the first of a long series of pieces which gave Mr. Howard a foremost position among American playwrights.

He married a sister of Sir Charles Wyndham, the English actor, and he had homes in New Rochelle, New York[2] and London, England where some of his plays were no less popular than in America. Bronson Howard was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The English newspaper The Yorkshire Evening Post reported in 1894:[3]

Mr Bronson Howard, the American playwright, calls the first stage of his work, "the smoking stage." He smokes for weeks, even months, only making notes.[3]

He died, aged 65, in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, where he had gone to regain his strength.[4]

Works

Among his other best-known plays are:

  • The Banker's Daughter (1878)
  • Old Love Letters (1878)
  • Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882)
  • One of our Girls (1885)
  • The Henrietta (1887; revived in 1913 as The New Henrietta)
  • Shenandoah (1889)
  • Aristocracy (1892)

In 1899 he collaborated with Brander Matthews in Peter Stuyvesant.

References
  1. "Howard, Bronson". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 881.
  2. The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play Making
  3. "Mr Bronson Howard". Yorkshire Evening Post. British Newspaper Archive. 16 January 1894. p. 3 col.6. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
  4. Howard, Bronson. Bronson, Howard, 1842-1908: Founder and President of the American Dramatists Club : Addresses Delivered at the Memorial Meeting Sunday, October 18, 1908, at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, p. 73. Marion Press, 1910. Accessed June 12, 2017. "In the springtime, the tender devotion of those him was rewarded by a gain in strength, so that, when summer came, his removal from his city residence overlooking the Hudson River to Avon-by-the-Sea, a cottage settlement on the New Jersey coast, gave every promise of restored health."
  5. "The Moving Picture World". 1916.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Literature
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