playwright

She looks so sad.

A sad story apparently: New York Times, 12 June 1914: Mrs. Elizabeth A.C. Holman of Waterville, Me. who is seeking in the United States Court here $50,000 damages for alleged conspiracy and abduction against two Hartford physicians and her former husband, the Rev. Cranston Brenton of Yonkers, N.Y., head of the Social Service Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York State, scored strongly this afternoon when her counsel obtained startling admissions from the star witness of the defense.

Mrs. Elizabeth Alden Curtis (Brenton) Holman was institutionalized at Brattleboro (VT) Insane Asylum in 1912, apparently in connection with their divorce. Her first husband (a professor at Trinity College) found two doctors to attest that she was insane. She sued them all for damages, accusing Brenton of using hypnotism to convince her to sign away her liberty. In June 1914, she won a verdict against Rev. Brenton and one of the doctors (Paul Waterman), and was awarded $4000. But Elizabeth Alden Curtis (Brenton) Holman (b 1879--corrected 3/20) wasn't just an aggrieved spouse; she was a writer. In 1902 she published a version of The Lament of Baba Tahir, a Persian text, under the name Elizabeth Curtis Brenton; in 1912, she and Holman (not yet married) filed for copyright for a play she wrote, based on Alice in Wonderland. Also in 1912, she published a play called The Norseman. She also published poetry in the Connecticut Magazine, The Crisis, and other literary periodicals. In 1900, she's mentioned in a Nation article as an American poet working on a "thoughtful, pure, and even pleasing" version of the Rubaiyat. books.google.com/books?id=yAYDAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA264&l... As "Elizabeth Curtis Brenton," she had letters that appeared in the New York Times Saturday Review of Books in 1901 and 1905. She may have married again after Holman; I find two listings for an "Elizabeth Alden Curtis Tidd" of Connecticut, filing for copyright on plays she wrote in 1929 and 1933. She seems to have used the pseudonym "Alden Curtis" too.

She looks like she really needs a drink

I started an entry in Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Alden_Curtis_Holman

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Rice "Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays The Adding Machine (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, Street Scene (1929)."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_MacKaye Percy MacKaye (1875–1956) was an American dramatist and poet.

Love the coiffure, the specs and the expression! A poet, for sure.