author
Elizabeth A. (Elizabeth Apthorp) McFadden
1875–1961
Best remembered for the holiday tale Why the Chimes Rang and the stage thriller Double Door, this American writer moved easily between children’s storytelling and the theater. Her work has had a long afterlife in print and onstage, with Double Door even reaching the screen.
1 Audiobook
Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act
by Elizabeth A. (Elizabeth Apthorp) McFadden, Raymond MacDonald Alden
About the author
Born in Newport, Kentucky, in 1875, Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden was an American author and playwright whose surviving bibliography shows a range from school and amateur drama to fiction and stage melodrama. Catalog and library records connect her with works including A Selected List of Plays for Amateurs and Students of Dramatic Expression in Schools and Colleges (1908), Why the Chimes Rang, The Man Without a Country (with Agnes Louise Crimmins), It Takes a Man, The Glitter & the Gold, and Double Door.
Her name is most often encountered today through two very different works. Why the Chimes Rang remained popular as a gentle Christmas story and one-act play, while Double Door became her best-known theatrical success; Broadway records show the play opened in 1933, and film databases note that it was adapted for the screen in 1934.
Available reference records give her full name as Elizabeth A. (Elizabeth Apthorp) McFadden and place her life from May 17, 1875, to July 16, 1961. I wasn’t able to confirm a reliable portrait image from the sources I checked, so none is included here.