Marjorie Benton Cooke (1876–1920)

Marjorie Benton Cooke was born in Richmond, Indiana. She attended prep schools in Detroit and Chicago before graduating from the University of Chicago with a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1899. Soon afterwards, she began working as a journalist and by 1902, she was touring the USA giving recitals of her own monologues and comic and dramatic sketches. Many of her monologues were published in booklets, collections, and anthologies. Her debut novel, The Girl Who Lived in the Woods, was published in 1910, followed by a dozen more. She also wrote four one-act plays and a volume of poetry. Her best known work was the novel Bambi, serialized in the American Magazine in 1914 and then published in book form. (This was not the coming of age story of a young deer that was the basis for a blockbuster Disney animated film.) It was a commercial success, with the first edition selling out two weeks before publication, and was adapted into a serialized radio show. Benton Cooke was an active supporter of the women's rights movement, and performed suffragist monologues at more than 100 public gatherings. In 1916, she wrote a chapter of The Sturdy Oak, a round-robin novel that narrated the conversion of an anti-suffragist into a suffragist reformer; other contributors included Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Fannie Hurst, and the book's proceeds went to the suffrage cause. She was a member of the feminist group Heterodoxy as well as the Women's University Club, both located in New York City. She also became an editor and writer for Four Lights, the journal of the New York City chapter of the Women's Peace Party. She died of pneumonia at age 43 in Manila, the Philippines, during an around the world cruise.