Edward albee biography pdf
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Biography
The following Biography was written by Lincoln Konkle, a founding member of the Society and Professor of English at The College of New Jersey.
Edward Albee was given up for adoption shortly after his birth March 12, 1928 in Washington D.C. Although Albee knew he was adopted by the age of six, and therein lay the beginning of his alienation, he only learned the few details of the circumstances of his birth and adoption after his adoptive mother’s death in 1989: his biological father abandoned his mother Louise Harvey and she gave up her son Edward Harvey to an adoption agency two weeks after his birth. Reed and Frances Albee became his foster parents, bringing him to their home in Larchmont, New York when he was only 18 days old; they officially adopted him on February 1, 1929, and changed his name to Edward Franklin Albee III.
The Albee’s were an old American family, having immigrated to Maine in the seventeenth century; an ancestor was one of the original minutemen in the Revolutionary War. Albee’s grandfather, Edward Franklin Albee II (1857-1930), was co-founder a
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Edward Albee
American playwright (1928–2016)
Edward Franklin Albee III (AWL-bee; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified as and named the Theater of the Absurd.[1] Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
His works are often considered frank examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet.
His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with
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Edward Albee is often considered one of America's greatest modern playwrights, known for his biting wit, his mastery of dramatic tension, and his grasp of the "Theatre of the Absurd," a movement first established in the work of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. Albee was born in Washington, DC on March 12, 1928. When he was two weeks old, baby Edward was adopted by millionaire couple Reed and Frances Albee. The Albees named their son after Reed's father, Edward Franklin Albee, a powerful vaudeville producer who had made the family fortune as a partner in the Keith-Albee Theater Circuit.
Young Edward was raised by his adoptive parents in Westchester, New York. Because of his father's and grandfather's involvement in the theatre business, Albee was exposed to theatre throughout his childhood. From early on, Edward's mother, Frances, worked to groom her son into a respectable member of New York society. The Albees' affluence meant that Edward's childhood was filled with servants and tutors. He went to afternoon
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