Queer Places:
Miss Porter’s School, 60 Main St, Farmington, CT 06032
Radgale, 1230 Green Bay Rd, Lake Forest, IL 60045
Graceland Cemetery
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
Frances
Lillian Wells Shaw (April 10, 1872 - October 12, 1937) was an American
poet and philanthropist.[1] The editors of Poetry, Harriet Monroe and
Alice Corbin Henderson
included in their 1917 selection for The New Poetry: An Anthology
poems by Frances Shaw. According to
Adrienne Munich and Melissa Bradshaw,
authors of Amy Lowell, American Modern, what connects these poets is their
appartenance to the queer sisterhood. Friend
Carl Sandburg wrote the poem
“Lady” in Frances’s honor in 1915.
Frances Lillian Wells was born and grew up in Chicago, the daughter of early Chicago shoe merchant Moses D. Wells and his wife, Frances E. Searls. She attended Miss
Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1893 she married architect
Howard Van Doren Shaw. The couple had 3 daughters: Evelyn (born 1893), Sylvia
(1897), and Theodora (1912). The family lived in Chicago, in a duplex designed
by Howard Shaw, and spent their summers with his family at Ragdale in Lake
Forest, Illinois,[2] also
designed by Howard Shaw. Frances Shaw’s husband built a writing studio for her on the Ragdale property. The cottage was named Wogden, a version of “Wog’s Den,” his nickname for Frances. Shaw lined the path to the studio with eight small elms and a balustrade. He referred to this section of the property as “Peacedale” because it was a restful “piece of Ragdale.”
As early as 1909 Frances Shaw had written and
produced her earliet play, The Heir of Manville Grange: A peripetatic play in
four acts. She went on to write several other plays, and acted in the Lake
Forest Players of Mary Aldis. Around 1912, Howard Shaw designed and built an
outdoor theater, the Ragdale Ring, on the Ragdale property as a showcase for
his wife's plays.[2]
Frances Shaw was writing poetry by 1910, and her debut collection (Ragdale
Verses, a limited edition of 50 copies) was published by the Gothic Press of
Lake Forest in 1911.
Frances Wells Shaw with daughters Sylvia and Evelyn, c. 1906. Courtesy of Shaw Family Ragdale Collection, Lake Forest College Library Special Collections
Shaw and her husband financially supported Poetry magazine; Frances Shaw
was also a friend and travelling companion of Poetry editor Harriet Monroe,
and her daughter Evelyn worked for a time in the Poetry office.[2]
Frances Shaw's poems appeared in Poetry beginning in the March 1914 issue, as
well as in anthologies from the magazine. She also published poetry in The
Century magazine and The Soul of a City: an urban anthology (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1923).[2]
The Shaws traveled extensively in America and Europe. Following Howard Shaw's
death in 1926, Frances Shaw continued to travel, lecturing and publishing
newspaper and magazine articles about her trips. She died in 1937 at her home
in Chicago.[1] After her death, her daughter Evelyn published a collection of her work called Who Loves the Rain and Other Poems by Frances Shaw (1940).
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