Margaret Ayer Barnes
Margaret Ayer Barnes (April 8, 1886, Chicago, Illinois – October 25, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Biography
Margaret Ayer grew up the youngest of four siblings in Chicago, Illinois. As a child, she had a keen interest in theater and reading. She befriended Edward Sheldon,[1] a playwright who would encourage her to become a writer many years later.
Ayer attended Bryn Mawr College, where she earned an A.B. degree in 1907.[2] In 1936, she received an honorary degree in Doctor of Letters from Oglethorpe University. She married Cecil Barnes in 1910,[3] and had three sons.
In 1920, Barnes was elected alumnae director of Bryn Mawr and served three years. As director, she helped to organize the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which offered an alternative educational program for women workers within a traditional institution. Consisting mainly of young, single immigrant women with little to no academic background, the summer program offered courses in progressive education, liberal arts and economics. Women in the program were encouraged to develop confidence as speakers, writers and leaders in the workplace.[4]
In 1926, at age 40, Barnes broke her back in a traffic accident. With the encouragement of friend and playwright Edward Sheldon, she took up writing as a way to occupy her time. Between 1926 and 1930 she wrote several short stories — all of them published by magazines and later collected in a volume titled Prevailing Winds[5] — and three plays.
Her first play, an adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, was purchased by Katharine Cornell in 1928. Gilbert Miller produced it on Broadway with Cornell's husband Guthrie McClintic directing; the play ran for 207 performances. Cornell next starred in a Broadway production of Dishonored Lady (1930), a play that Barnes wrote with Sheldon based on the famous case of Madeleine Smith. It was a popular melodrama that ran 16 weeks on Broadway followed by a long tour.[6][7][8]
Barnes' 1929 play Jenny was also written in collaboration with Sheldon. The comedy was produced on Broadway starring Jane Cowl.[5][9]
In 1931 Barnes won the Pulitzer Prize for her first novel, Years of Grace.[10]
A 1936 lawsuit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for copyright infringement claimed that the script MGM used for the motion picture Letty Lynton (1932) plagiarized material from the play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Barnes.[11] The film is still unavailable today because of this lawsuit.
Personal life
Barnes was the wife of a prominent Chicago attorney, Cecil Barnes, with whom she had three sons including noted architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Her older sister was suffragette and fellow author Janet Ayer Fairbank; her niece Janet Fairbank was a well-known operatic singer.[12] Barnes died October 25, 1967, at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 81.[5]
Works
- The Age of Innocence (1928), a dramatization of Edith Wharton's novel, adapted for a 1934 motion picture of the same name
- Jenny (1929), a play written with Edward Sheldon
- Dishonored Lady (1930), a play written with Edward Sheldon, adapted for a 1947 motion picture of the same name
- Prevailing Winds (1928), short stories
- Years of Grace (1930), a novel for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
- Westward Passage (1931), a novel adapted for a 1932 motion picture of the same name
- Within This Present (1933), a novel
- Edna, His Wife (1935), a novel, adapted into a play of the same name written by Cornelia Otis Skinner
- Wisdom's Gate (1938), a novel
References
- ^ "Pennsylvania Center for the Book". pabook.libraries.psu.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
- ^ Fischer, Heinz Dietrich (1997). Novel/fiction Awards 1917-1994: From Pearl S. Buck and Margaret Mitchell to Ernest Hemingway and John Updike. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783598301803. Archived from the original on 2023-04-17. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- ^ Haytock, Jennifer (2013-08-20). The Middle Class in the Great Depression: Popular Women's Novels of the 1930s. Springer. ISBN 9781137347206. Archived from the original on 2023-04-17. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- ^ "Margaret Ayer Barnes Collection at Bryn Mawr Library". Archived from the original on 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2006-04-08.
- ^ a b c "Margaret Ayer Barnes Is Dead". The New York Times. October 26, 1967. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ "The Age of Innocence". Internet Broadway Database. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ "Dishonored Lady". Internet Broadway Database. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ Cornell, Katharine; Sedgwick, Ruth Woodbury (1939). I Wanted to Be an Actress: The Autobiography of Katharine Cornell. New York: Random House. pp. 83–88.
- ^ "Jenny". Internet Broadway Database. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ Stringer, Jenny; Sutherland, John (1996). The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Literature in English. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192122711. Archived from the original on 2023-04-17. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- ^ Schechter, Roger; Thomas, John (2010-08-17). Principles of Copyright Law (Concise Hornbook Series). West Academic. p. 373. ISBN 9781628105179.
- ^ "Mrs. Barnes Dies - Pulitzer Prize Author - 'Years of Grace' novel a Chicago Story". The Chicago Daily Tribune: D6. October 26, 1967.
External links
- Margaret Ayer Barnes at IMDb
- Margaret Ayer Barnes at the Internet Broadway Database
- Margaret Ayer Barnes collection at Bryn Mawr College library
- Photos of first edition of Years of Grace
- Margaret Ayer Barnes at Find a Grave
- v
- t
- e
- His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
- The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
- Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
- One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
- The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
- So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)
- Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
- Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
- Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
- Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
- Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
- The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
- The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
- Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
- Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
- Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
- The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
- The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
- In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
- Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
- Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
- A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
- Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
- Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
- The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)
- The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
- The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
- A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
- Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
- A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
- The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
- Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
- The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
- The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
- The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
- The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
- The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
- The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
- The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
- The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
- No award given (1974)
- The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)
- Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
- No award given (1977)
- Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
- The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
- The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
- Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
- Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
- Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
- A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
- Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
- The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
- Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
- A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
- Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
- Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
- Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
- March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
- Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
- No award given (2012)
- The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
- The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
- The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
- The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)