Wife Susan
Glaspell
Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Stanford
University, Old Union 232, Stanford, CA 94305
Iowa Writers' Workshop, Iowa City, IA 52245
Nekrotafio Agiou Ilia
Delphi, Regional unit of Phocis, Central Greece, Greece
George
Cram Cook or Jig Cook (October 7, 1873 – January 14, 1924) was an American
theatre producer, director,
playwright, novelist, poet, and university professor. Believing it was his
personal mission to inspire others, Cook led the founding of the Provincetown
Players on Cape Cod in
1915; their "creative collective"[1] was
considered the first modern American theatre company.[2] During
his seven-year tenure with the group, Cook oversaw the production of nearly
one-hundred new plays by fifty American playwrights.[3] He
is particularly remembered for producing the first plays of Eugene
O'Neill, along with those of Cook's wife Susan
Glaspell, and several other noted writers. While teaching English
literature at the University
of Iowa from 1896 to 1899, Cook also taught what is thought to be the
first creative writing course. Titled "Verse-Making," the course was continued
by Cook's colleagues at the university after he left. It was not until the
1950s that the Iowa
Writers Workshop was founded.
Cook wrote: "I was born and raised in Davenport,
Iowa, where my family was one of the town's oldest and most wealthy. My
father, a corporate lawyer, strongly encouraged my education from a young age,
while my mother instilled in me a passion for culture and the arts. I
completed my bachelor's degree at Harvard in
1893." He continued his studies in Europe at the University
of Heidelberg in 1894 and at the University
of Geneva the following year. Upon completing these studies, Cook returned
to Iowa. He taught English literature and classics at the University
of Iowa from 1895 until 1899. He also taught an early creative writing
course, which he called "Verse Making".[4] During
the 1902 academic year, Cook was an English professor at Stanford
University. It was not until the 1950s that Paul
Engle is credited with developing what is considered the world's first
creative writing program, the Iowa
Writer's Workshop, which has gained renown.[5][6][7]
In Davenport, Cook associated with other young writers in what was informally
referred to as the Davenport
group. Among them was writer Susan
Glaspell. He divorced his second wife, and he and Glaspell married in
1913. To escape community gossip and seek larger world for their work, the
couple moved to New York City, where they lived in Greenwich
Village. There they had a daughter Nilla and son Harl together. In the
summer of 1915 they went to Provincetown,
Massachusetts for the season, as did many other writers and artists from
the Village. Cook was among the founders of the Provincetown
Players that year, an important step in the development of American theatre.
The group would perform works by Cook and Glaspell, as well as the first plays
of Eugene O'Neill and Edna
St. Vincent Millay, among others. Cook would lead the Provincetown Players
until 1919, at which time he took a sabbatical. Although he returned to the
group in 1920, internal wrangling and his own frustration led to his
effectively abandoning the cooperative.
Wife Susan Glaspell with Cook wearing his fustanella. Pictured also is Cook's dog from which he contracted a fatal disease.
In 1922, Cook and his family moved to Greece.
They lived at Delphi, where
they spent the summers camped in spruce huts high above the village on Mount
Parnassus. After a short time, Cook began to wear fustanella,
the traditional Greek shepherd's attire. In 1924 he contracted a
rare infectious disease from his pet dog and died. Cook's obituary
appeared on the front page of the New
York Times. He is buried at Delphi in a small cemetery within hundreds of
feet of the ruins of the famous Temple
of Apollo, home of the oracle.
So beloved was Cook by the locals that the Greek government allowed a stone
from the temple foundation to be used as his grave marker.[8] Years
later his daughter Nilla
Cram Cook was buried beside him.
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cram_Cook