Bronson Howard

Bronson Howard 1842-1908, American dramatist, b. Detroit. His plays are important in the development of American drama. He was a newspaper reporter in New York until the success of his first play, Saratoga, a farcical comedy produced in 1870. He wrote 12 subsequent plays, including Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882), one of the first American dramas of social criticism; The Henrietta (1887), a satire on business practice; and by far his most popular play, Shenandoah (1888), a Civil War drama, first unsuccessfully produced but revived the following year with great success.

Bibliography: See his collected plays (ed. by A. G. Halline, 1941).

Howard, Bronson (1842–1908), American playwright, one of the first to make use of native material with any skill, and also to earn his living solely by playwriting. He worked as a journalist in Detroit until success came to him with Saratoga (1870), a farcical comedy produced by Augustin Daly. As Brighton (1874), it was adapted for London, Charles Wyndham playing the hero. Howard wrote several other comedies, including The Banker's Daughter (1878), which had previously been seen in 1871 as Lilian's Last Love, and, as The Old Love and the New, was successfully produced in London in 1879. His most important play, however, was Young Mrs Winthrop (1882), the first to be produced in London (in 1884) without alteration or adaptation. The most successful of his later plays were The Henrietta (1887), a satire on financial life, and Shenandoah (1888), a drama of the Civil War.

Howard, Bronson [Crocker] (1842–1908), Michigan‐born dramatist, came to New York in 1865, where he became a pioneer in the drama of contemporary manners with his farce Saratoga⧫ (1870) and of social criticism in Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882). Old Love Letters (1878) was a popular one‐act social comedy. Baron Rudolph (1881) and The Henrietta (1887) were satires on American business. One of Our Girls (1885) was a social comedy contrasting French and American standards, a theme further elaborated in Aristocracy (1892), contrasting a nouveau riche Californian, an old established New Yorker, and a European patrician. Shenandoah (1888), a Civil War drama, was his greatest and most popular work. Although Howard did much to improve the American drama, he was bound by both convention and his own desire to achieve effects at the expense of realism.