Akins, Zoë (1886-1958). American poet, playwright, and screenwriter. Akins’ friendship with Cather started in 1909, when she submitted verse to McClure’s magazine, which Cather rejected, advising her to stay with playwriting. Akins subsequently moved from her hometown of St. Louis, MO, to New York City and achieved success as a playwright. She moved to California in the 1930s, adding screenwriting to her accomplishments. Her play The Old Maid (1935), an adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In 1932, Akins married Captain Hugh Rumbold, a British theatrical designer and director; he died eight months later. Cather and Akins carried on a lifelong correspondence, with Cather writing affectionate letters that included both commentary on her own works and criticism of Akins’.

Dumas, Alexandre (1824-1895) (“Alexandre Dumas, fils [son]”). French novelist and playwright. Born out of wedlock in Paris, France, Alexandre Dumas was the son of the future writer (then twenty-two years old) Alexandre Dumas and a dressmaker, Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay. In 1831 the elder Dumas legally recognized his son, removed him from his mother, and had him educated. In 1844, the young Dumas went to live with his father, where he met Marie duPlessis, the inspiration for the heroine of La Dame aux camellias (1848). Dumas adapted his novel into a play in 1852, which, as Camille, was the most widely known and successful of his many novels and plays. Most of his later works were plays, often with contemporary settings, and often dealing with moral issues. Cather, in My Ántonia (1918), describes the impact of seeing Camille on Jim and Lena, who expected something more like the dashing romances of the elder Dumas: “A couple of jackrabbits, run in off the prairie, could not have been more innocent of what awaited them” (Bk, 3, ch. 3).

O’Neill, Eugene (1888-1953). American playwright. Born in New York City to Irish immigrant actor James O’Neill and to Mary Ellen Quinlan O’Neill, Eugene O'Neill's parents placed him in boarding schools while his father toured as an actor. After attending Princeton University for one year, he spent several years at sea and became involved in union organizing. After recovering from tuberculosis, he dedicated himself to playwriting. He became a regular on the Greenwich Village literary scene and a member of the Provincetown Players. He is credited with introducing realism to the American stage. His first published play, Beyond the Horizon (1920), was a success on Broadway and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an award he was to win multiple times, including posthumously for the autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. Cather was not impressed, writing in 1937 that she did not “like” his works but at least he created his plays from his own imagination rather than adapting novels (#1352). O’Neill had a complicated family life (he was married four times and had distant and difficult relations with his three children) and struggled with alcoholism, which was thought to be the cause of his early death in Boston, MA, although cerebellar cortical atrophy was later determined to be the cause.