Ella Cheever Thayer | |
---|---|
Born | (1849-09-14)September 14, 1849 Portland, Cumberland County Maine, United States |
Died | October 28, 1925(1925-10-28) (aged 76) 149 West Canton Street, Boston, Massachusetts, US |
Occupation | Novelist Playwright Telegraphist |
Period | 1879–1897 |
Genre | Fiction |
Subject | Romance |
Literary movement | Suffragette |
Ella Cheever Thayer (September 14, 1849 – October 28, 1925) was an American playwright and novelist. Born in Maine, she worked as a telegraph operator and published several works in her lifetime, including the hit 1879 novel Wired Love: A Romance in Dots and Dashes.
Biography
She was the daughter of apothecary George Augusta Thayer (October 19, 1824 – December 13, 1863) and Rachel Ella Cheever Thayer (October 18, 1823 - May 15, 1907). One sister, Mary Georgie Thayer (October 9, 1869 – March 30, 1912), was a school teacher. Thayer eventually became a telegraph operator at the Brunswick Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, who used her experience on the telegraph as the basis for her book Wired Love, A Romance of Dots and Dashes, which became a bestseller for 10 years.
She was also a playwright, having written The Lords of Creation in 1883. Her play is reviewed in the book On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman's Suffrage Movement by Bettina Friedl, published in 1990 (ISBN 1-55553-073-7) and it was one of the first suffragette plays.
She also wrote Amber, a Daughter of Bohemia, a drama in five acts, in 1883. She also wrote short stories for magazines including "The Forgotten Past" in Argosy (January 1897).
Later life and death
She lived in Saugus, Massachusetts. Thayer died of liver cancer; her ashes were placed on November 1, 1925 in Bigelow Chapel, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
References
- "What Mark Zuckerberg Should Learn From Horny 19th-Century Telegraph Operators. No, really." by Megan Ward, Slate, May 27, 2024.
- Jackson, Maggie (December 19, 2004). "Balancing Acts". The Boston Globe.
- Collins, Paul. "Love on a Wire". Uncollected Paul Collins. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
- "Book Reference". Library of Congress Book lists. Archived from the original on July 12, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
- Jepsen, Thomas C. "Women Telegraphers and the Railroad in Pennsylvania". Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
- wjkennaugh (February 2, 2008). "Wired Love – A Romance of Dots and Dashes – Ella Cheever Thayer". No Link Left Unclicked (Blog). wordpress.com.
- "Suffragist Plays". Answers.com. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
- Library of Congress, Copyright Office (1918). "Dramatic compositions copyrighted in the United States, 1870 to 1916 .. (Volume 1)". Government Printing Office. p. 10. Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
- Robinson, E.P. "Sketch of Saugus" (PDF). The Bay State Monthly. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2012-03-25.
External links
- Works by Ella Cheever Thayer in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Ella Cheever Thayer at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Ella Cheever Thayer at the Internet Archive
- Works by Ella Cheever Thayer at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- 1849 births
- 1925 deaths
- Writers from Portland, Maine
- People from Saugus, Massachusetts
- 19th-century American novelists
- American women novelists
- American women short story writers
- American women dramatists and playwrights
- 19th-century American women writers
- 19th-century American short story writers
- Hello Girls
- Novelists from Maine