Coyne Fletcher
American writer
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Lydia Coyne Fletcher (about 1853 – March 2, 1904) was an Irish-American playwright and novelist.
about 1853
Coyne Fletcher | |
|---|---|
 Coyne Fletcher, from an 1895 publication | |
| Born | Lydia Coyne Fletcher about 1853 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | March 2, 1904 Washington, D.C. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Relatives | Joseph Stirling Coyne (cousin) |
Early life and education
Fletcher was born in Dublin, Ireland and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.[1] Her uncle Charles Leonard Fletcher was a playwright in New York City, and ran an acting school there.[2] "Coyne" was her grandmother's family name; dramatist Joseph Stirling Coyne was her cousin.[3]
Career
Fletcher was a governess as a young woman. She was a postal clerk in Washington, D.C., and wrote novels and plays.[4][5] She was a charter member of the Association of American Authors when it was founded in 1892.[6] She adapted her military comedy A Bachelor's Baby for the stage, and it was produced in Tennessee and Washington in 1895,[7][8] and on Broadway in 1897. Olga Nethersole was cast to star in her play Yvolna (1898), based on Salammbo by Flaubert.[9][10][11]
Beyond fiction and plays, Fletcher's 1891 essay on the South Carolina lowlands is still cited as a useful first-hand account of the region a generation after the American Civil War.[12][13] She went to court in 1902 concerning 32 acres of land in Washington, known as "Girl's Portion".[14]
Works
- The Moonshiners (1880)[15]
- Brother Shadrack (1882)[15]
- Glenflesk (1882)[15]
- Outlawed (1882)[11]
- Madge (1882)[15]
- The Indians (1882, with Arthur McKee Rankin)[15][16]
- The Americans (1883, with Arthur McKee Rankin)[17]
- Me and Chummy (1890)
- A Bachelor's Baby (1886, 1891)[18]
- "In the Lowlands of South Carolina" (1891, Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly)[19]
- Who Am I? (1897)[11]
- Yvolna (1898)[9][10][11]
- An American Alliance (1899)[15]
- Sans Culotte (1900)[11]
- The Cardinal's Love Story (1901)[15]
- A Cavalier of Maryland (1901)[15]
- His Other Self (1903)[15]
- An Irish Nobleman (1903)[15]
- Mirabeau (1903)[15]
- The Silence of the Judge (1903)[11]
Personal life and legacy
Fletcher was described as a "tall, handsome woman",[1] a "strong character"[5] and a "bachelor woman", with a knack for decorating and entertaining. She collected steel engravings and souvenir cushions.[20] "As a dialect storyteller, she has no equal among any women I have known," wrote one reporter in 1894.[5]
Fletcher died in 1904, at the age of 50, in a hospital in Washington, D.C.[21][22] In 1909, a play named A Bachelor's Baby was produced by Charles Frohman in New York, without credit to Fletcher; her nephew sued to stop the production.[23] The credited playwright, Francis Wilson, claimed that the works only shared a title.[24] Three films were produced with essentially the same title: A Bachelor's Baby (1922), The Bachelor's Baby (1927) and Bachelor's Baby (1932); but none of them credited Fletcher's novel or play as source material.