Coyne Fletcher
A white woman with dark wavy hair in an updo, wearing a light-colored top with a standing collar
Coyne Fletcher, from an 1895 publication
Born
Lydia Coyne Fletcher

about 1853
Dublin, Ireland
DiedMarch 2, 1904
Washington, D.C.
OccupationWriter
RelativesJoseph Stirling Coyne (cousin)

Lydia Coyne Fletcher (about 1853 – March 2, 1904) was an Irish-American playwright and novelist.

Early life and education

Fletcher was born in Dublin, Ireland and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.[1] Her uncle Charles Leonard Fletcher was a playwright in New York City, and ran an acting school there.[2] "Coyne" was her grandmother's family name; dramatist Joseph Stirling Coyne was her cousin.[3]

Career

Fletcher was a governess as a young woman. She was a postal clerk in Washington, D.C., and wrote novels and plays.[4][5] She was a charter member of the Association of American Authors when it was founded in 1892.[6] She adapted her military comedy A Bachelor's Baby for the stage, and it was produced in Tennessee and Washington in 1895,[7][8] and on Broadway in 1897. Olga Nethersole was cast to star in her play Yvolna (1898), based on Salammbo by Flaubert.[9][10][11]

Beyond fiction and plays, Fletcher's 1891 essay on the South Carolina lowlands is still cited as a useful first-hand account of the region a generation after the American Civil War.[12][13] She went to court in 1902 concerning 32 acres of land in Washington, known as "Girl's Portion".[14]

Works

Personal life and legacy

Fletcher was described as a "tall, handsome woman",[1] a "strong character"[5] and a "bachelor woman", with a knack for decorating and entertaining. She collected steel engravings and souvenir cushions.[20] "As a dialect storyteller, she has no equal among any women I have known," wrote one reporter in 1894.[5]

Fletcher died in 1904, at the age of 50, in a hospital in Washington, D.C.[21][22] In 1909, a play named A Bachelor's Baby was produced by Charles Frohman in New York, without credit to Fletcher; her nephew sued to stop the production.[23] The credited playwright, Francis Wilson, claimed that the works only shared a title.[24] Three films were produced with essentially the same title: A Bachelor's Baby (1922), The Bachelor's Baby (1927) and Bachelor's Baby (1932); but none of them credited Fletcher's novel or play as source material.

References

  1. 1 2 Babbitt, Juliette M., "Women Writers in Washington" The Midland Monthly 3(3)(March 1895): 259.
  2. ↑ Beasley, David R. (2002). McKee Rankin and the Heyday of the American Theater. David Beasley. p. 477, note 139. ISBN 978-0-88920-390-7.
  3. ↑ "Small Talk of the Week". The Sketch. 23: 468. October 5, 1898.
  4. ↑ "She Writes Plays; Miss Coyne Fletcher and her Works". The Beatrice Daily Times. 1895-11-09. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. 1 2 3 "Women Who Work". The St. Joseph Herald. 1894-11-30. p. 8. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ↑ "Association of American Authors". The Critic. 17 (536): 306. May 28, 1892 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ↑ "Next Week at the Theaters". The Evening Times. 1895-09-21. p. 6. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ "Coming to the Theatres". The Times. 1895-09-19. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. 1 2 "Coyne Fletcher's New Play; Olga Nethersole Accepts a Washington Lady's Drama". The Kansas City Times. 1899-04-23. p. 10. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. 1 2 "Miss Coyne Fletcher, Playwright". Lexington Herald-Leader. 1898-11-22. p. 14. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Library of Congress. Copyright Office; Parsons, Henry S. (Henry Spaulding) (1918). Dramatic compositions copyrighted in the United States, 1870 to 1916 . Boston Public Library. Washington, Govt. Print. Off. pp. 1744, 2051, 2133, 2560, 2644.
  12. ↑ Vivian, Daniel J. (2018-03-01). A New Plantation World: Sporting Estates in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1900–1940. Cambridge University Press. pp. 30, footnote 2. ISBN 978-1-108-27162-2.
  13. ↑ Brock, Julia; Vivian, Daniel (2015-10-01). Leisure, Plantations, and the Making of a New South: The Sporting Plantations of the South Carolina Lowcountry and Red Hills Region, 1900–1940. Lexington Books. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-7391-9579-6.
  14. ↑ "Lydia C. Fletcher Enters Suit Over Realty". The Washington Times. 1902-12-26. p. 9. Retrieved 2023-08-28 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Library of Congress. Copyright Office; Parsons, Henry Spaulding (1918). Dramatic compositions copyrighted in the United States, 1870 to 1916 . Boston Public Library. Washington, Govt. Print. Off. pp. 55, 247, 291, 307, 822, 975, 1070, 1089, 1362, 1493, 1551.
  16. ↑ O'Neill, Patrick B. (1978). Canadian plays : a supplementary checklist to 1945. Internet Archive. Halifax : Dalhousie University, University Libraries, School of Library Service. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-7703-0158-3.
  17. ↑ Beasley, David R. (2002). McKee Rankin : and the heyday of the American theater. Internet Archive. Waterloo, Ont. : Wilfrid Laurier University Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-88920-390-7.
  18. ↑ Fletcher, Coyne (1891). The Bachelor's Baby. Research Publications.
  19. ↑ Fletcher, Coyne (March 1891). "In the Lowlands of South Carolina". Frank Leslie's Popular Magazine. 31 (3): 280–288.
  20. ↑ "The Bachelor Woman; How She has Broken Loose from her Leading Strings". The Pittsburgh Press. 1896-03-08. p. 13. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ↑ "'Coyne' Fletcher Dead; Well-known Novelist and Dramatist Expires in Washington". The Baltimore Sun. 1904-03-04. p. 7. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑ "'Coyne' Fletcher's Will for Probate". The Washington Times. 1904-03-16. p. 5. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ↑ "Suit against Chas. Frohman; S. F. Whitman Seeks to Enjoin Him from Producing 'The Bachelor's Baby'". The Sun. 1909-05-02. p. 5. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. ↑ "Sues Francis Wilson to Stop His Play". The New York Times. 1909-05-02. p. 19. Retrieved 2023-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
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