Marjorie Benton Cooke

A specialist in comic dramatic sketches and light romantic fiction, she also wrote and performed monologues on suffragist issues.

Her first novel, The Girl Who Lived in the Woods, was published by A. C. McClurg & Co. in 1910 and, like many of her future works, concerned the overcoming of conflicts between an unorthodox romantic couple.

Initially serialized in the American Magazine from April to October 1914 and published in the same year by Doubleday, Page & Co., it is the story of a young woman who impulsively marries an idealistic but impractical writer and becomes a novelist and playwright herself.

[3] Its humor and witty dialogue quickly made it a readers' favorite and commercial success, with the first edition selling out two weeks before publication.

[9] On April 26, 1920, Benton Cooke's death was announced via cablegram from Manila, where she had arrived a few days previously on a world cruise with her mother.