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A Delicate Balance: A Play Author Biography

Edward Albee was adopted in Washington, D.C., two weeks after his birth on March 12, 1928, by Reed A. Albee (who, after retiring from his father's theatre business, raised horses) and Frances (Cotter) Albee (who once worked as a live mannequin for the upscale Bergdorf department stores). His adopted grandfather, Edward Franklin Albee, for whom he was named, was part owner of the Keith-Albee Theatre Circuit, a coast-to-coast chain of over two hundred vaudeville theaters. As stated in Richard E. Amacher's book Edward Albee, upon his adoption, Albee was immediately taken to a "sprawling Tudor stucco house in Westchester [New York]" where he lived out his early years in a "world of servants, tutors, riding lessons." As a child, Albee spent his time in New York during the summers and in Miami or Palm Beach during the winters. Albee's mother is quoted as saying (in Amacher's book) that "there was...
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