Zona Gale (August 26, 1874 – December 27, 1938)
was the first woman Pulitzer Prize, Drama (Miss Lulu Bett) in 1921.Queer Places:
University of Wisconsin, 716 Langdon St, Madison, WI 53706
506 W Edgewater St, Portage, WI 53901
Silver Lake Cemetery
Portage, Columbia County, Wisconsin, USA
Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, 3649 Mission Inn Avenue, Riverside, CA 92501
Zona Gale (August 26, 1874 – December 27, 1938)
was the first woman Pulitzer Prize, Drama (Miss Lulu Bett) in 1921.
She was an American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. She was a member of the Heterodoxy Club.
Gale became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921 for her novel Miss Lulu Bett (1920). Gale supported women's causes throughout her life, and her work often depicts strong female characters, most notably in Miss Lulu Bett. Gale's novel was so popular it shared the distinction of being the best-selling novel of 1920 with Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951). Lulu is constrained by the expectations of her controlling family and the small town where she lives, perspectives biased by her status as an unmarried older woman; by the end of the novel she man-ages to escape the limiting viewpoints as she and her new husband are last seen heading in the direction of the railway station. Miss Lulu Bett represents a woman successfully liberating herself from the oppression of her family and those of larger social conditions.
Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing. She attended Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and later entered the University of Wisconsin, from which she received a Bachelor of Literature degree in 1895, and four years later a master's degree.
After college, Gale wrote for newspapers in Milwaukee and New York City, for six years. "A visit to Portage in 1903 proved a turning point in her literary life, as seeing the sights and sounds of town life led her to comment that her 'old world was full of new possibilities.' Gale had found the material she needed for her writing, and returned to Portage in 1904 to concentrate full time on fiction."[1] She wrote and published there until her 1938 death, but made trips to New York.[1]
She published her first novel, Romance Island, in 1906, and began the very popular series of "Friendship Village" stories. In 1920, she published the novel Miss Lulu Bett, which depicts life in the Midwestern United States. She adapted it as a play, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.[1]
"In addition to her fiction writing, Gale was an active supporter of the La Follettes (Robert Sr., Robert Jr. and Philip) and progressive causes. She was an active member of the National Women's Party, and she lobbied extensively for the 1921 Wisconsin Equal Rights Law."[1] In the same year, she attended the founding meeting (in New York) of the Lucy Stone League and became a member of its Executive Committee.[2] Her activism on behalf of women was her way to help solve "a problem she returned to repeatedly in her novels: women's frustration at their lack of opportunities."[1]
In 1928 at the age of fifty-four she married William L. Breese, also of Portage.
Gale, who was a frequent visitor to the Mission Inn Hotel in Riverside, California, became a friend of Frank Augustus Miller, the founder of the hotel. After Miller's death in 1935, Zona Gale wrote a biography titled Frank Miller of Mission Inn, published in 1938.[3] A group of rooms on the fourth floor of The Mission Inn became known as "authors row" and the "Zona Gale room" is room 409.
Gale died of pneumonia in a Chicago hospital in 1938.[4]
My published books:
