Anne Crawford Flexner (1874–1955)

Anne Crawford Flexner was born in Georgetown, Kentucky, the daughter of Louis G. Crawford and Susan Farnum. She earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1895 and then returned to Kentucky and worked as a tutor. By 1897, she had saved enough money to move to New York City to pursue a literary career. There she wrote drama reviews for the Louisville Courier-Journal and her own plays. She married Abraham Flexner, the prominent educator, with whom she had two daughters. Anne's first professionally-produced play, Miranda of the Balcony, opened in 1901, and was a great success. It enabled her to acquire the rights to adapt for the stage Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a 1901 book by her Louisville friend Alice Hegan Rice. After its initial run in 1904, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch became her most-performed play. Over the years, Anne traveled extensively in Europe with her husband and expressed her abiding interest in British literature
especially in her comedy, mystery, and biographical dramas. Her daughter Eleanor Flexner became a distinguished scholar and pioneer of the field of women's studies.