Discipline: Literature

Edith Isaacs

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell fellowships: 1913, 1914
Edith Juliet Rich Isaacs (1878–1956) was editor of Theater Arts magazine from 1919 to 1945. Isaacs tried to make American theatergoers aware of people and movements in the European theater and to make them familiar with London’s Old Vic and Moscow’s Art Theater. She printed early plays by Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, and others, and work by American designers. Her magazine also encouraged the growth of pioneer progressive groups. Isaacs was active in the Federal Theater Project and supported black culture. She was married to Lewis Montefiore Isaacs (1877–1944), a real estate lawyer and accomplished musician who was one of the founders of the Musicians Foundation of New York and early supporter of MacDowell. Books she edited include Theater: Essays on the Arts of the Theater (1927); Plays of American Life and Fantasy (1929); and Architecture for the New Theater (1935). She wrote The Negro in the American Theater (1947).

Studios

Veltin

Edith Isaacs worked in the Veltin studio.

Veltin Studio was donated by alumni of the Veltin School, a school for girls in New York with a highly respected visual arts department. As the plaque just outside the entrance attests, this studio was used by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson during most of the 24 summers he spent at MacDowell. Perhaps most famously, Thornton Wilder put the finishing…

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