Jane W. Bruner

Jane W. Bruner
Bruner's sheet music to "Annabel Lee"
Born1845 Edit this on Wikidata
DiedJuly 20, 1909 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 63–64)
Long Beach Edit this on Wikidata
OccupationWriter Edit this on Wikidata

Jane Woodworth Bruner (1845 – July 20, 1909) was an American author, painter, musician, and anti-Catholic activist.

Bruner was a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania.[1] She was the daughter of California mining magnate Joseph "Ophir" Woodworth. [2] She married and later divorced Dr. William H. Bruner.[3]

Bruner was a frequent contributor to Overland Monthly. She set Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" to music, publishing the sheet music in 1870.[4] She wrote a novel set in Grass Valley, California, Free Prisoners: A Story of California (1877).[5]

Her play A Mad World (1883) premiered at Baldwin's Theatre in San Francisco.[6] She befriended Mark Twain when he had lived in California and wrote to Twain asking him to attend the play in New Haven, Connecticut.[7]

Bruner was an anti-Catholic lecturer and published an anti-Catholic tract, The Question of Romanism (1908).[8][9]

Bruner died on 20 July 1909 in Long Beach, California.[10]

  1. ^ Garner, Winfield Scott; Wiley, Samuel T. (1893). Biographical and portrait cyclopedia of Chester County, Pennsylvania : comprising a historical sketch of the county, by Samuel T. Wiley, together with more than five hundred biographical sketches of the prominent men and leading citizens of the county. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. Philadelphia, Pa. : Gresham Publishing Co.
  2. ^ "The Smelter 11 Nov 1882, page 6". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2023-07-24.
  3. ^ "The San Francisco Examiner 11 Apr 1874, page 3". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2023-07-24.
  4. ^ Smith, Ronald L. (1990). Poe in the media : screen, songs, and spoken word recordings. Internet Archive. New York : Garland Pub. ISBN 978-0-8240-5614-8.
  5. ^ Baym, Nina (2011). Women writers of the American West, 1833-1927. Internet Archive. Urbana, Chicago : University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03597-5.
  6. ^ "The New York clipper annual ... containing theatrical, musical and sporting chronologies ...": v. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ^ Twain, Mark (1975). Mark Twain's notebooks & journals. Internet Archive. Berkeley : University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02542-4.
  8. ^ "The Monitor, Volume 41, Number 23, 7 September 1895: The Monitor". The Archdiocese of San Francisco. 1895-09-07. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ "The Monitor, Volume 40, Number 18, 2 February 1895: The Monitor". The Archdiocese of San Francisco. 1895-02-02. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. ^ "The Bakersfield Californian 21 Jul 1909, page Page 3". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2023-07-24.