This collection contains the personal and professional papers of American writer Zoë Akins (1886-1958). It includes correspondence with various literary, theatrical and motion picture figures of the first half of the twentieth century. There are also manuscripts of novels, plays, poems, short stories, outlines for plays, and articles. There is also correspondence related to her husband, Hugo Rumbold (d. 1932), and the Rumbold family.

Zoë Akins (1886-1958) was a dramatist, novelist, poet and screenwriter. Born in Humansville, Missouri, on 30 October, she was educated at home before attending Monticello Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois, and Hosmer Hall in St. Louis. While a teenager in St. Louis, Akins wrote poetry and criticism for William Marion Reedy’s Mirror; in 1905, she moved to New York to be an actress but eventually found writing to be her true talent. Her early plays include, “Iseult the Fair,” “Papa,” “The Magical City,” and the moderately successful “Déclassée,” with Ethel Barrymore.

7,354 pieces in 185 boxes + ephemera.

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