King Arthu's Socks And Other Village Plays

Floyd Dell (1887-1969) was an American author and critic. As a literary critic, Dell had a national reputation for promoting modern American literature in the 1910s. Dell was a best-selling author of novels and books of stories and essays. He was a life-long poet and the author of a hit Broadway play. His influence is alive in the work of many major American writers from the first half of the 20th century. In 1908 Dell moved to Chicago where he became editor of the Friday Literary Review and a leader of the Chicago Renaissance. In his position at FLR, Dell promoted the work of Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandburg and other Chicago writers. Relocating to New York in 1913, Dell became managing editor of Max Eastman's radical magazine The Masses, and a leader of the pre-war bohemian community in Greenwich Village. Dell joined the Provincetown Players and his play King Arthur's Socks (1922) was the first performed by that historic theatre group. Following the war, Dell turned to fiction and his first novel, the bildungsroman Moon-Calf (1920), became a best seller. This was followed by several other novels with limited success.