Willis Steell

Willis Steell (1866–1941) was an American journalist, poet, dramatist, novelist and translator.

Journalism Willis Steell was born in Detroit. He seems to have begun his literary career in New York as a journalist on the New York Tribune from 1887 to 1888, and soon became the New York correspondent for the Albany Press, St. Paul Dispatch, Chicago Times, and Nashville American, and soon was head of a syndicate of Southern papers.

In the 1920s he was the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald, at which time he interviewed Gertrude Stein in 1924 after she published her long gestated novel The Making of Americans. The reason he moved to Paris was to be near his daughter Susan Steell (born 1906), who had won the first scholarship for American girls to study singing in Paris with the French mezzo-soprano Blanche Marchesi that had been established in 1923 by the opera singer Marie Jeritza. Her father commissioned a portrait of her about 1923 from the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury, which was exhibited in 1925 and of which American Art News, April 11, 1925, said that it "...shows Mr. Ury at his most discerning." Susan (often later called Suzanne) was to enter Broadway, and became one of the close friends of Katharine Hepburn at the time of her first Hollywood success. Susan died in 1959 at 53.

First published novel His first novel was the well-received Isidra: The Patriot Daughter of Mexico – a Mexican story of the French intervention (1888) which was compared with some of the work of Bret Harte (1836–1902).

Literary career By 1898, he had written, amongst a mass of journalism by this time, a number of fictional and dramatic works: The Morning after the Play: A Comedy in One Act (1889), Mortal Lips (1890) a story of contemporary life in Harlem, In Seville, & Three Toledo Days – a series of Spanish sketches (1894), and The Fifth Commandment A Play in One Act (1898). He had also written poetry, and a long poem about Christopher Columbus called The Death of The Discoverer appeared in book form in Philadelphia in 1892.

In 1909 he published Walt Whitman's Early Life on Long Island. In March and April 1914 he held a series of "Conferences" at the Waldorf Hotel in New York on Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, and Maurice Maeterlinck.

In 1924 Steell translated Jérôme Tharaud and Jean Tharaud's Long Walk of Samba Diouf, an important piece of literature on negro culture, and in 1928 published a biography Benjamin Franklin of Paris 1776-1785.

Steell died in New York City on January 31, 1941.

Contemporary assessment Three letters were published in the New York Times on April 2, 5, and 16, 1898, in answer to a correspondent's enquiry as to who this writer was. In that of April 5, a correspondent identified only by the initials J. J. E. wrote of Steell,His work is forceful and original in prose, while such verse by him as I have seen impressed me like genuine poetry. Mr Steel is a newspaper man and a successful one, for I think we all have to admit that the newspapers swallow up a great deal of our best talent – at least for a time.

Works Isidra: The Patriot Daughter of Mexico (1888) The Morning After the Play: A Comedy in One Act (1889) W.H. Baker & Company, Boston Mortal Lips (1890) The Death of the Discoverer (1892) H. Murray, New York In Seville, & Three Toledo days (1894) Hillier Murray and Co., New York The Firm of Cunningham (1905) The Fifth Commandment: A Play in One Act (1907) W.H. Baker & Company, Boston Brother Dave: A Play in One Act (1909) W.H. Baker & Company, Boston The Prospector: A Comedy in Three Acts (1912) A Bride from Home: A Vaudeville Sketch in One Act (1912) Faro Nell: A Vaudeville Sketch in One Act (1912) Sniping: A Drama in One Act (1915) A Mountain of Gold Anna: A Play A Prince of Lorraine: Drama in Five Acts