Josephine Preston Peabody


Josephine Preston Peabody was an American poet and dramatist.

Biography

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.
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.
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".
On June 21, 1906 she married Lionel Simeon Marks, a British engineer and professor at Harvard University. They had a daughter, Alison Peabody Marks, and a son, Lionel Peabody Marks.

Selected works