BROWN, ALICE

(1857-1948)

   Born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the novelist wrote a village drama in 1914 that won a $10,000 playwriting competition sponsored by producer Winthrop Ames. The resulting publicity suggested that Brown might be the long-awaited "great American playwright," an ironic circumstance in that her play, Children of Earth, ran only 39 performances at Booth's Theatre in January and February 1915, while the true "great American playwright," Eugene O'Neill, would not yet see his first produced play until the following summer in Provincetown.