author
Dorothy Speare
1898–1951
A former opera singer who turned to fiction, she wrote with an insider’s feel for performance, ambition, and modern city life. Her best-known novel, Dancers in the Dark, helped capture the restless energy of the Jazz Age.
1 Audiobook
Dancers in the Dark
by Dorothy Speare
About the author
Dorothy Speare was an American writer remembered especially for Dancers in the Dark. Archival records describe her as an opera singer turned author, a background that helps explain the vivid theatrical world behind her fiction.
She also worked for Hollywood motion picture producers and published stories and articles in major magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and McCall's. Her career moved across music, film, and popular fiction, giving her writing a lively, performance-shaped point of view.
Late in life, she taught creative writing at Boston University, where she served as an associate professor from 1949 until shortly before her death in 1951. Even in a relatively short life, she built a varied creative career that linked the stage, the screen, and the page.