Bronson Howard

Howard was born in Detroit where his father Charles Howard was Mayor in 1849.[1] He prepared for college at New Haven, Conn., but instead of entering Yale he turned to Journalism in New York. From 1867 to 1872 he worked on several newspapers, among them the Evening Mail and the Tribune. As early as 1864 he had written a dramatic piece (Fantine) which was played in Detroit. His first important play was Saratoga, produced by Augustin Daly in 1870. It was very successful and became the first of a long series of pieces which gave Mr. Howard a foremost position among American playwrights.

He married a sister of Sir Charles Wyndham, the English actor, and he had homes in New Rochelle, New York[2] and London, England where some of his plays were no less popular than in America. Bronson Howard was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He died, aged 65, in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, where he had gone to regain his strength.[3]

Among his other best-known plays are:

• The Banker's Daughter (1878)
• Old Love Letters (1878)
• Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882)
• One of our Girls (1885)
• The Henrietta (1887; revived in 1913 as The New Henrietta)
• Shenandoah (1889)
• Aristocracy (1892)

In 1899 he collaborated with Brander Matthews in Peter Stuyvesant.

• The Social Pirates, series of stories adapted into a film series[4]

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. Missing or empty |title= (help)

• Moses, M.J. (1911). The American Dramatist. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bronson Howard.

• Bronson Howard papers, 1852-1895, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• Works by Bronson Howard at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Bronson Howard at Internet Archive
• Bronson Howard portraits(New York Public Library, Billy Rose collection)