Marjorie Benton Cooke (November 27, 1876 – April 26, 1920) was an Americanmonologist, playwright, and novelist. A specialist in comic dramatic sketches and light romantic fiction, she also wrote and performed monologues on suffragist issues.[1]
She was born inRichmond, Indiana to Joseph Henry Cooke and Jessie Benton Cooke and attended theUniversity of Chicago, graduating with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1899. She began working as a journalist soon after and by 1902 was touring the United States as a monologist. Several of hermonologues andone-act plays were published in booklets and collected form. Her first novel,The Girl Who Lived in the Woods, was published byA. C. McClurg & Co. in 1910 and, like many of her future works, concerned the overcoming of conflicts between an unorthodox romantic couple.[2]
Benton Cooke's most well-known work was the novelBambi. Initiallyserialized in theAmerican Magazine from April to October 1914 and published in the same year byDoubleday, Page & Co., it is the story of a young woman who impulsively marries an idealistic but impractical writer and becomes a novelist and playwright herself.[3] Its humor and witty dialogue quickly made it a readers' favorite and commercial success, with the first edition selling out two weeks before publication.[4][5]Bambi was followed by other novels includingCinderella Jane (1917) andThe Threshold (1918), which both explore women's work, class, and the relations between the sexes.
As an active supporter of thefeminist politics of her time, Benton Cooke performedsuffrage monologues at over a hundred gatherings including theNational American Woman Suffrage Association’s 1912 convention inLouisville, Kentucky.[6] She was a member of literary associations like the Little Room Club in Chicago and theAuthors League, as well as ofwomen's clubs like the Women's University Club and the feminist debating and activist groupHeterodoxy, both located in New York City.[2][7] She was an editor and contributing writer forFour Lights, the journal of the New York City chapter of theWomen's Peace Party.[8] In 1916 she contributed a chapter toThe Sturdy Oak, around-robin novel that narrates the conversion of ananti-suffragist into a suffragist reformer. Other contributors includedDorothy Canfield Fisher andFannie Hurst, and the book's proceeds went to the suffrage cause.[9]
On April 26, 1920, Benton Cooke's death was announced viacablegram fromManila, where she had arrived a few days previously on a world cruise with her mother.[10] Her novelMarried? was published posthumously and was one of at least four of her works adapted into asilent film. Her estate was estimated at $42,358 in 1922 and included $17,100 infilm rights.[11]
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