Agnes Ruby Boulton (September 19, 1893 – November 25, 1968) was a British-born American

pulp magazine Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the Pulp (paper), wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their ...

writer in the 1910s, later the wife of

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of Realism (theatre), realism, earlier associated with ...

Life and career

Boulton was born Agnes Ruby Boulton in 1893 in London, England, the daughter of Cecil Maud (née Williams) and Edward William Boulton, an artist. She grew up in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

"Mrs. Agnes Kaufman, 7'5, Dies; Eugene O'Neill's Second Wife: Writer of Short Stories and Pulp Novels Was Mother of Oona and Shane", ''The New York Times'', November 26, 1968, p. 53 and later in West Point Pleasant, New Jersey. She gave birth to a daughter, Barbara Burton, in 1914; she claimed to have married a man named Burton who later died, but later admitted that this was a falsehood. Boulton met O'Neill in the fall of 1917 in the ''Golden Swan Saloon'', better known as ''The Hell Hole'', in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

. They married some six months later, on April 12, 1918, at

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Provi ...

."Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O'Neill"
Yale University Library, accessed February 17, 2012 O'Neill, at the time, was considered a promising author of one-act plays. During the first year of their marriage, he wrote ''Beyond the Horizon,'' his first full-length, Broadway play, which won the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

in 1920. During the early years of the marriage, Boulton modified her writing and had two stories published by ''

The Smart Set ''The Smart Set'' was an American monthly literary magazine, founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann and published from March 1900 to June 1930. Its headquarters was in New York City. During its Jazz Age heyday under the editorship of H. L. Men ...

'', an important magazine co-edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. She gave birth to Shane O'Neill in 1919 and Oona O'Neill in 1925. The marriage came to an end when O'Neill left Boulton for the actress Carlotta Monterey in 1928, and they divorced in 1929."UCSB Theater Arts Scholar Examines Life of Agnes Boulton, Wife of Playwright Eugene O'Neill-Press Release"
UC Santa Barbara, September 1, 2010 The Boulton/O'Neill marriage has been studied and written about by William Davies King, professor of theater at UC Santa Barbara, in "Another Part of a Long Story: Literary Traces of Eugene O'Neill and Agnes Boulton" (Michigan 2010). Her daughter, Oona O'Neill, married

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...

in 1943 at the age of 18 (he was 54), and moved to Switzerland with him nine years later, renouncing her American citizenship.

Late career publications

Boulton published a novel, ''The Road Is Before Us'', in

1944 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 2 – WWII: ** Free France, Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command First Army (France), French Army B, part of the Sixt ...

, and a memoir of the first two years of her marriage to O'Neill in 1958, entitled ''Part of a Long Story''. The memoir gives a portrayal of an odd literary marriage at its inception. A new and annotated version of that book was published by McFarland in 2011. A selection of her stories can be found on eOneill.com.

Death

Boulton died on November 25, 1968 in West Point Pleasant, New Jersey.

Posthumous publications

Contrary to the terms of the 1929 divorce settlement, Boulton had saved most of her letters to and from O'Neill, as well as some O'Neill manuscripts, including "Exorcism," a one-act play by O'Neill, which was thought to have been destroyed but had been given by Boulton to a friend, screenwriter-producer Philip Yordan. It was published in the October 17, 2011, issue of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

''. The O'Neill/Boulton correspondence was published in 2000 by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in a volume called ''A Wind Is Rising.''O'Neill, Eugene and Boulton, Agnes; King, William Davies (Ed.)
"A Wind Is Rising"
''A Wind Is Rising'' (2000), books.google.com, Associated University Presses, Inc. (Cranbury, NJ), For a full biographical study of Boulton, see William Davies King, "Another Part of a Long Story: Literary Traces of Eugene O'Neill and Agnes Boulton" (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)

References

External links

* * hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.boultona, Agnes Boulton Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Boulton, Agnes 1893 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American essayists 20th-century American memoirists 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers 20th-century English memoirists 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English women writers English short story writers English women novelists American women short story writers English emigrants to the United States English expatriates in Bermuda Writers from Philadelphia People from Point Pleasant, New Jersey Novelists from New Jersey American women memoirists American women novelists Novelists from Pennsylvania Writers from London English women non-fiction writers Pulp fiction writers Writers from Ocean County, New Jersey