Elizabeth Frances Corbett (EFC), daughter of Major Richard W. and Isabelle Adkins
Corbett, was born on Sept. 30, 1887, in Aurora, Illinois, where Major Corbett edited
the Aurora Daily News. The family moved to the
Milwaukee area in 1888 when the latter accepted the position of Chief Clerk of the
Northwestern Branch of the National Soldiers’ Home, at the site of the present
Veterans Administration Facilities. Elizabeth’s brother, Richard, and sister,
Gertrude (“Gay”) were born in the Chief Clerk’s quarters on the Home grounds where
the family lived for 25 yrs. Here she played on the spacious, garden-like grounds
and talked to the old soldiers, later claiming she was brought up by Union
veterans.
The Corbett children were driven by veterans in a horse-drawn buggy to the Model
Department of the Milwaukee State Normal School and later to West Division High
School. When she attended the State University in Madison, she was the Assistant
Editor of the Wisconsin Literary Magazine and
contributed stories and articles to various other university publications. During
her junior year at the University, she was the only girl to receive a prize in the
annual Badger contest, winning the fifth of six available literary prizes. In her
senior year she was elected to the local Phi Beta Kappa chapter.
A member of the Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority, she headed that social society’s
Committee on Professional Opportunities for Women, 1909-1910, urging that women
should prepare for careers of real interest to them, rather than automatically
choose teaching. From 1913-1917, she served as Editor-In-Chief of the Alpha Gamma Delta Quarterly.
Back in Milwaukee, Elizabeth lectured for the Vocational Opportunities Committee of
the Milwaukee Association of Collegiate Alumnae and for ten years worked actively
for Women’s Suffrage, serving as Press Chairman of the Milwaukee County Association.
She urged political party membership for women as well as men. In 1919, at the
request of women in her neighborhood, she conducted a citizenship class focusing on
civics, current events and politics. At the same time, she was developing ideas for
books and contributed articles and short stories to magazines. By 1920, she
successfully published three novels. Her parents had strongly encouraged her
writing, providing financial and moral support. When her father died in 1925,
Elizabeth moved to New York City to be in closer contact with publishers.
From 1927-1956, she had many plays, novels and series published. One of her most
successful was The Young Mrs. Meigs. Published in
1931, the work established her as a successful novelist. Set in Milwaukee, the story
of an independent woman of great warmth and charm, who at the age of eighty-three,
insisted on enjoying life and would not be dominated by her children, was an widely
reviewed success. Elizabeth, in response to the demand, brought out other novels
centered on this delightful lady. In 1941, Out at the
Soldiers’ Home, a nostalgic book of memoirs of her childhood with the
disabled Civil War veterans elicited memory-laden correspondence from many, who
retained memories of the times, people, and places she described.
From the mid-thirties to the late 1950s, she was much sought after to appear with
major publishers’ book fairs and on radio and, later, television talk shows, to talk
about herself and her books. Although the market for her writing declined after the
late 1950s, her last published novel was Sunday at
Six (1971). She lived until the age of ninety-three in the Greenwich
Village apartment that she occupied since the 1930s. Elizabeth Frances Corbett died
January 24, 1981 at home in New York City, NY.
