author
Alice L. De Vine
Best known for turning Longfellow’s Hiawatha into a stage-ready six-act drama, this little-documented writer left behind a rare theatrical adaptation from the 1890s. Her work reshapes a famous poem for performance, giving readers a glimpse of how literary classics were reimagined for the stage.
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 largely obscure author whose surviving published record is centered on A Dramatization of Longfellow's Hiawatha. Library and public-domain catalog records identify her as the writer who reworked, revised, arranged, and dramatized Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem into a six-act play.
That adaptation was published in 1894 and is associated with St. Paul. The text presents itself as a theatrical version of The Song of Hiawatha, shaped for performance rather than simply for reading, which makes De Vine notable as an adapter as well as a writer.
Very little confirmed biographical information about her appears to be readily available in major public sources. Because of that, she is remembered mainly through this single surviving work and the window it offers into late 19th-century literary adaptation and popular stage culture.