Ada Dwyer Russell (1863–1952) was an American actress who performed on stage in

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and became the muse to her poet lover

Amy Lowell Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Life Amy Lowell was born on Febr ...

Brief biography

Dwyer was born in 1863 to a recently baptized Mormon Salt Lake City bookkeeper James Dwyer and his wife Sara Ann Hammer. In 1893 at the age of thirty she married Boston-born actor Harold Russell (lived 1859–1927), and they had a daughter Lorna the next year. Their marriage fell apart soon after Lorna's birth and they entered a lifelong separation, though, never legally divorcing. Although no record exists of Dwyer renouncing the Mormon religion she was raised in, she ceased involvement, and her father was asked to resign in 1913 by top leaders after telling other Salt Lake members that same-sex sexual activity was not a sin.

Dwyer and Lowell

Nearly two decades after separating from Russell, she met writer

in 1912 while on an acting tour in Boston for a play. Dwyer moved in with Lowell in 1914 and their long-term lesbian relationship, or "

Boston marriage A "Boston marriage" was, historically, the cohabitation of two wealthy women, independent of financial support from a man. The term is said to have been in use in New England in the late 19th/early 20th century. Some of these relationships were r ...

" (the term for a 19th-century romantic female relationship) would last over a decade until Lowell's death in 1925. Lowell lovingly referred to Dwyer as "the lady of the moon" and loved Dwyer's daughter and grandchildren as her own. Unfortunately, most of the primary document letters of communication between the two were destroyed by Ada at Amy's request, leaving much unknown about the details of their life together as they had to hide the nature of their relationship.

Lowell's love poems

Ada Dwyer Russell was the subject of many of Lowell's poems, and Lowell wanted to dedicate her books to Dwyer who refused except for one time in a non-poetry book in which Lowell wrote, "To A.D.R., This, and all my books. A.L." Examples of these love poems to Dwyer include ''the Taxi'', ''Absence'', Preface reprinted at th
author's website
''In a Garden'', ''Madonna of the Evening Flowers'', ''Opal'', and ''Aubade''. Amy admitted to

John Livingston Lowes John Livingston Lowes (December 20, 1867, Decatur, Indiana – August 15, 1945, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American scholar and critic of English literature, specializing in Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Geoffrey Chaucer. Life Lowes earned a B.A. ...

that Dwyer was the subject of her series of romantic poems titled "Two Speak Together". Reprinted a
thefreelibrary.com
Lowell's poems about Dwyer have been called the most explicit and elegant lesbian love poetry during the time between the ancient

Sappho Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied ...

and poets of the 1970s.

References

External links

* Th
Hervey Allen Papers
at the University of Pittsburgh containing correspondence with Dwyer * {{DEFAULTSORT:Russell, Ada Dwyer 1863 births 1952 deaths 19th-century American actresses American stage actresses Bisexual actresses Bisexual women LGBT Latter Day Saints 20th-century American actresses LGBT people from Utah American LGBT actors