author
Alice L. De Vine
Known today for a single surviving work, this little-known writer adapted Longfellow's Hiawatha into a six-act stage drama. The result offers a glimpse of late 19th-century theatrical taste and the era's fascination with turning well-known poems into performance pieces.
1 Audiobook
A dramatization of Longfellow's Hiawatha: A spectacular drama in six acts
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alice L. De Vine
About the author
Alice L. De Vine is a very obscure figure in the historical record, and the most clearly documented work connected with her is A Dramatization of Longfellow's Hiawatha, first published in the 1890s and now preserved by Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.
That book presents Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem as a "spectacular drama in six acts," with De Vine credited for rewriting, revising, arranging, and dramatizing the material for the stage. Even with so little personal information available, the work suggests a writer interested in performance, adaptation, and making a familiar literary text playable before an audience.
Because reliable biographical details about her life have proven hard to confirm, it is best to remember De Vine through the work itself: a rare example of a dramatic adaptation that helped carry a famous American poem into another form.