Born in Sterling, Illinois, on August 17, 1871, to Elizabeth Brown (Riddle) and Rev. Meade Creighton Williams,[1] pastor of a Presbyterian church in St. Louis, Missouri.[2] His father wrote Early Mackinac and was the editor of a Presbyterian journal. Jesse's brothers were David. R. Williams, of St. Louis, and Terrell Williams, a law school professor of Washington University in St. Louis.[2]
His grandfather, also Jesse Lynch Williams, was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as the government director of the roads. He was an engineer and constructor for the Union Pacific Railroad.[1]
Education and career
Williams studied at Beloit Academy.[1] He began his literary career in college. He won the Nassau Literary Magazine short story contest in his junior year.[3] He received his bachelor's degree in 1892.[4] As a graduate student at Princeton University, he wrote Princeton Stories (1895)[5] which often featured the daily life of an undergraduate football player. He graduated from Princeton with a master's degree in 1895.[3] In 1898, he wrote The History of Princeton University with John de Witt.[1] He and Booth Tarkington co-founded the Triangle Club at Princeton[4] and edited The Lit. For three years, beginning in 1900, he co-founded and was the first editor of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.[3]Robert Frost wrote a recommendation to the University of Michigan regarding his suitability for the Fellowship of Creative Arts. Frost indicated that Williams was relevant, open-minded, practical, a "good all-around participator", and, along with his wife, good company. During the 1925–1926 academic year, he held the Fellowship in Creative Arts at the University of Michigan.[5][6] He received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Princeton in 1919.[3]
He wrote a number of short stories starting in the 1890s.[1] He wrote four plays and six novels by 1929, including Why Marry? (1917), for which he was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama.[3] He wrote the play The Stolen Story (1906), based upon his times as a reporter,[4][5] which he first wrote as a short story, The Stolen Story and Other Newspaper Stories. He wrote the play The Stolen Story (1906), based upon his times as a reporter.[5] His plays Why Marry? (1917) and Why Not (1922), and Lovely Lady (1925) were produced on Broadway.[7]Why Not explores the experiences of divorce. Lovely Lady is about the attempts of a lady to attract the attentions of a lawyer and his son.[4] His novels and stories include Princeton Stories,[3]The Adventures of a Freshman (1899), The Girl and the Game (1908), The Married Life of the Frederic Carrolls (1910),[1] and She Knew She Was Right.
He was a member of the Authors League of America, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and other organizations, in which he sometimes had a leadership role.[1][5]
Marriage and children
He was married to Alice Laidlaw (1872–1960,[6] daughter of Elizabeth C. Onderdonk and Henry Bell Laidlaw, on June 1, 1898, in New York. They had three children, Henry Meade, Jesse Lynch, and Laidlaw Onderdonk Williams.[8] They lived in Princeton, New Jersey. Alice graduated from Veltin School for Girls in 1892. She was a member of the Audubon Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and a number of organizations, including sitting on the executive board of the New Jersey Equal Franchise Society.[8] She wrote a book entitled Sunday Suppers (1912).[6][8]