Helen Howe (January 11, 1905 – February 1, 1975) was an American novelist, biographer and

monologist A monologist (), or interchangeably monologuist (), is a solo artist who recites or gives dramatic readings from a monologue, soliloquy, poetry, or work of literature, for the entertainment of an audience. The term can also refer to a person wh ...

Early life and education

Helen Huntington Howe was born to Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe and Fanny Huntington Quincy Howe on January 11, 1905. Her father was an author and biographer while her mother was known as an essayist and author. Her mother was from a long line of Quincys in Boston, stretching back through her great-great-great-grandfather

Josiah Quincy Jr. Josiah Quincy IV (; January 17, 1802 – November 2, 1882) was an American politician. He was mayor of Boston (December 11, 1845 – January 1, 1849), as was his father Josiah Quincy III (mayor in 1823–1828) and grandson Josiah Quincy VI ...

Her brother Quincy went on to become a writer, editor and radio commentator while Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe became a law professor in Harvard University and a biographer. Howe was educated in private schools in Boston including Milton Academy where she graduated in 1922 before attending

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

for a year. She also attended the Theatre Guild School in New York. Howe had a skill in mimicry and discovered she enjoyed writing her own character sketches to perform.

Career

She had a career as a monologist for over fifteen years with shows across America. She gave several performances in The White House. In 1936 she took her show to both the Arts Theatre and

Mercury Theater The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also r ...

in London. Howe also produced books exploring the kinds of characters she portrayed in her sketches. Her first published novel was in 1943. She began the second half of her career more as a novelist.

Personal life

Howe married Reginald Allen who had worked as a curator of the

Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...

Collection in the

Pierpont Morgan Library The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th ...

. She lived in New York, on Fifth Avenue. Howe died in 1975. Her service was at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and her grave is in Mount Wollaston Cemetery,

Quincy, Massachusetts Quincy ( ) is a coastal U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Greater Boston, Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston's immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 1 ...

. Her papers are archived in Harvard.

Bibliography

* ''The whole heart'', 1943 * ''We happy few'', 1946 * ''The circle of the day'', 1950 * ''The success,'' 1956 * ''The fires of autumn'', 1959 * ''The gentle Americans, 1864-1960 : biography of a breed'', 1965 * ''Wheels: biographical sketch of John Brooks Wheelwright'', 1966

References and sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Howe, Helen 1905 births 1975 deaths 20th-century American women writers Writers from Boston 20th-century American novelists American women novelists 20th-century American biographers American women biographers Novelists from Massachusetts Monologists