Julia Constance Fletcher

Julia Constance Fletcher
Born1853
Brazil
Died1938
Other namesGeorge Fleming
Alma materAbbot Academy
Andover, Massachusetts
OccupationAuthor

Julia Constance Fletcher (1853–1938)[1] was an author and playwright who professionally went by the pseudonym of George Fleming.

She was born in Brazil in 1853,[2][3] the daughter of James Cooley Fletcher (1823-1901) and granddaughter of the banker Calvin Fletcher. Her mother was Henriette Malan, the daughter of a Swiss clergyman.[4] She went to Abbot Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, and was in the class of 1867.[5]

After her parents' divorce, Julia went to live with her mother in Venice. Henriette had remarried, her second husband being a painter, Eugene Benson. Julia also spent some time in London.[4] One of the sponsors of her early novels was Alfred Sassoon, a junior member of the wealthy Sassoon family and the father of Siegfried Sassoon. Alfred's infatuation with Julia was the catalyst for his desertion of his wife, Theresa.[6] Julia's other supporters included her grandfather's friend Henry James, and she also knew Rudyard Kipling, Robert Browning and Walter Pater.[4]

Two of her books, Kismet and Mirage, were published as "no name novels" by Roberts Brothers in Boston.[2] Both books deal with Americans' adventures while traveling abroad, along the Nile and in Syria, respectively. Mirage has been described by Oscar Wilde scholar S. I. Salamensky, as a roman-á-clef fiction in which "a dangerously appealing, if slightly bi- or asexual, figure based on Wilde romantically pursues" a woman who is thought to represent Fletcher.[7]

In 1900 she wrote a translation/adaptation of Edmond Rostand's play Les Romanesques, which she titled The Fantasticks. The 1960 musical of the same name, also based on Les Romanesques, borrows heavily from Fletcher's version.

  1. ^ Elaine Showalter (1993). Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle. Rutgers University Press. p. 321. ISBN 978-0-8135-2018-6.
  2. ^ a b Stern, Madeleine B.; Shealy, Daniel (1991-01-01). "The No Name Series". Studies in the American Renaissance: 375–402. JSTOR 30227614.
  3. ^ "Julia Constance Fletcher (George Fleming) (1853-1938). Kismet. Keller, ed. 1917. The Reader's Digest of Books". www.bartleby.com. Retrieved 2016-11-06.
  4. ^ a b c Robert Browning (1966). Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas Fitzgerald, 1876-1889. Harvard University Press. pp. 108. ISBN 978-0-674-51900-8.
  5. ^ "Phillips Academy - 1800s". www.andover.edu. Archived from the original on 2015-02-14. Retrieved 2016-11-06.
  6. ^ Max Egremont (22 May 2014). Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography. Pan Macmillan. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-4472-3478-4.
  7. ^ Salamensky, S. I. (2002-01-01). "Re-Presenting Oscar Wilde: Wilde's Trials, "Gross Indecency," and Documentary Spectacle". Theatre Journal. 54 (4): 575–588. doi:10.1353/tj.2002.0137. JSTOR 25069138. S2CID 191616185.