In 1898 at an art exhibition, Josephine was introduced to Khalil Gibran (6th January 1883 – 10th April 10 1931) the Lebanese-American writer, poet and artist, by Fred Holland Day, the American photographer and co-founder of the Copeland-Day publishing house. When Gibran returned to the Lebanon they wrote regularly to each other.
From 1901 to 1903 Josephine taught English at Wellesley. The Stratford-on-Avon prize was awarded to her in 1909 for her play “The Piper”, which was produced in England in 1910 and in America at the New Theatre, New York City, in 1911.*
On 21st June 1906, Josephine married Lionel Simeon Marks, a British engineer and professor at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. They had a daughter, Alison Peabody Marks (1908 – 2008), and a son, Lionel Peabody Marks (1910 - 1984).
THE SANS-FOYER (Tr. The Homeless) by Josephine Preston Peabody
Love, that Love cannot share,—
Now turn to air!
And fade to ashes, O my daily bread,
Save only if you may
Bless you, to be the stay
Of the uncomforted.
Behold, you far-off lights,—
From smoke-veiled heights,
If there be dwelling in our wilderness!
For Love the refugee,
No stronghold can there be,—
No shelter more, while these go shelterless.
Love hath no home, beside
His own two arms spread wide;—
The only home, among all walls that are:
So there may come to cling,
Some yet forlorner thing
Feeling its way, along this blackened star.
From the book edited by Edith Wharton and produced and sold in aid of the Belgian Homeless during WW1 see below.
SAmong her publications were:
Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew (1897)
The Wayfarers: A Book of Verse (1898)
Fortune and Men's Eyes: New Poems, with a Play (1900)
In the Silence (1900)
Marlowe (her first play),[6]
The Singing Leaves; a book of songs and spells (1903)
The Wings (1905), a drama
The Book of the Little Past (1908)
The Piper: A Play in Four Acts (1909)
The Singing Man (1911), poems
The Wolf of Gubbio (1913)
New Poems (1915)
*NB: According to Olga David, Secretary of The Stratford Society: "The Stratford Upon Avon Memorial Theatre was inaugurated in April 1879.
The prize awarded to Josephine Preston Peabody was awarded for an International playwriting competition - 315 Writers took part;
“The Piper” won first prize - $1,500.00; and was performed at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1910 and subsequently that summer in London and in New York in the winter of 1911".
Sources:
“The Book of the Homeless - Le Livre des Sans-Foyer - a 1916 collection of essays, art, poetry, and musical scores”, edited by Edith Wharton and sold for the benefit of the American Hostels for Refugees (with the Foyer Franco-Belge) and of the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916) which is available as a free download
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57584/57584-h/57584-h.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Preston_Peabody
