An Outbreak, Two Pandemics, and Karmic Healing -- The Plays of Neith Boyce
My article discussing Neith Boyce's plays, specifically the online production of "The Sea Lady", is published in the 40th anniversary edition of Provincetown Arts(2025)!
Editions and Life of Neith Boyce
Compiled from holograph and typed witnesses in the American Literature Collection of Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this edition of Boyce's lifewriting supports her reputation as a pioneer of literary modernism. Remembered as a founding member of the Provincetown Players, Boyce is also famous for her longtime marriage to the anarchist journalist Hutchins Hapgood and their mutual struggles with theories of Free Love. This volume of hitherto-unpublished diaries and what she called "a sort of autobiography" also reveals events and family concerns that surface in her later fiction and plays.
Born in Indiana in 1872, Boyce grew up in Los Angeles, where her father was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Times. She, as a teenager, participated in the bohemian life of the city before moving east with her family. In Boston and New York she worked as a freelance writer, then as a reporter and editor on Lincoln Steffens' Commercial Advertiser. There she met Hapgood, whom she married in 1899. Her "autobiography" ends with her marriage.
Two other documents, diaries, also comprise the book. One records her first sojourn in Europe in 1903 with Hapgood and their son. A second recounts a trip to Italy in 1914—when she, Mabel Dodge and Carl Van Vechten plus assorted children became stranded there with the outbreak of World War I. Honoring Boyce's placement of these documents together in possible order for publication, this documentary edition also portrays her early friendships with Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge, Carl Van Vechten, Lincoln Steffens, and a host of lesser-known artists and writers who contributed to the creative flux of the first half of the 20th century.
Boyce would go on to publish four novels, dozens of short stories, plays—one of which, "Winter's Night," is now considered a feminist classic—, poetry, essays, memoir, and finally, a volume of family and national history compiled from 250 years of family letters and public documents. Her friendship circle included Mary Heaton Vorse, Susan Glaspell, John Dos Passos, Marguerite Zorach, and many other creative artists.
This website contains a comprehensive index to this 2003 edition of Neith Boyce's autobiographical writings. This online index is more detailed than that in the book.