Background
Barnes, Margaret Ayer was born on April 8, 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Janet (Hopkins) Ayer.
Barnes, Margaret Ayer was born on April 8, 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Janet (Hopkins) Ayer.
Margaret graduated from the University School for Girls in Chicago in 1903. She attended Bryn Mawr College, where she earned an A.B. degree in 1907. In 1936, she received an honorary degree in Doctor of Letters from Oglethorpe University.
In 1920, Margaret accepted the post of alumnae director, determined to make learning available at all economic levels. Barnes spearheaded the Working Women's Institute at Bryn Mawr which provided scholarships for women, particularly those who took industrial positions during World War I, only to lose them when the soldiers returned home. The program was so successful that it became a model for other institutes around the country.
Barnes retired from the board in 1923 and returned to the normal family routine: summers in Mt. Desert, Maine, winters performing with a small community theater group. Since childhood, she had maintained a friendship with playwright Edward Sheldon, who urged her to continue writing after the 1925 auto accident. Reunited with Sheldon in New York City during a follow-up operation, Barnes showed him her stories. With his help, the Pictorial Review accepted one for publication. By 1928, all the pieces she had written during her rehabilitation had found their way into magazines.
Sheldon, suffering from disabling arthritis and failing eyesight, was doing little of his own writing and remained eager to champion Barnes' career. When she expressed an interest in dramatizing Edith Wharton 's The Age of Innocence, he offered her advice and encouragement. Actress Katharine Cornell accepted the leading role, and the play was a hit. Sheldon became her writing partner for the plays Jenny (1929) and Dishonored Lady (1930), the latter again starring Cornell. When a movie production company bought the movie rights, then rejected the Barnes-Sheldon screenplay but used uncredited portions of it anyway, the authors received $500,000 to settle a subsequent plagiarism suit.
While none of her novels inspired the critical acclaim of her Pulitzer-Prize winning Years of Grace, Barnes continued to write while living in Chicago, attempting to "re-create in written words the conclusions I had drawn from life itself." Predominant among her subjects were the social history of the upper-class Midwest, and the need, regardless of financial or social status, for women to have a "vocation" to broaden the scope of their daily lives. Following her death in 1967, her manuscripts were donated to the Harvard and New York Public libraries.
Quotations:
"All wars are crusades, or we're made to feel they are. That's just what's so wicked about them. We're made to feel - not think - and people can't think when they feel."
"It's a great shame that the world was organized with two sexes. It makes for a lot of trouble."
"The martial spirit is never dead. It sleeps through fortunate generations, but it wakes up very quickly to the toot of a fife. There's that roistering spirit in men which leads them to think a good fight is a lark - until they've been in one. And the impulse to fight for your own incarnation of an ideal."
Margaret married Cecil Barnes in 1910, and had three sons, Cecil Jr., Edward Larrabee and Benjamin Ayer. All three of Margaret's sons attended their father's alma mater, Harvard University. When her husband Cecil grew ill in the 1940s, Barnes stopped writing and cared for him until his death in 1949.