Josephine Preston Peabody achieved literary recognition in 1910 when her verse play The Piper, published the previous year, won the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Memorial Prize. Although considered "essentially a poet," in Katherine Lee Bates's words in her foreword to The Collected Poems of Josephine Preston Peabody (1927), Peabody wrote two one-act plays and five full-length dramas, and she participated in a brief revival of verse drama. Showing the influence of the Bible and Renaissance drama, particularly the works of William Shakespeare, Peabody's plays often used traditional dramatic forms and espoused feminist principles. A few of her works were staged, mostly at noncommercial theaters.

Peabody's early passion for the theater is attributed to her parents. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on 30 May 1874, Peabody was the second of three daughters surviving infancy of Charles Kilham Peabody and Susan Josephine (Morril) Peabody. Regular theatergoers, her parents discussed the latest New York productions at home...