author
Ella Cheever Thayer
1849–1925
Best known for the lively 1879 novel Wired Love, she turned firsthand experience as a Boston telegraph operator into one of the earliest romances shaped by modern communication. She also wrote plays linked to the woman suffrage movement, giving her work an extra note of independence and energy.
2 Audiobooks
Lords of Creation: Woman Suffrage Drama in Three Acts
by Ella Cheever Thayer
Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes
by Ella Cheever Thayer
About the author
Born in Portland, Maine, in 1849, Ella Cheever Thayer became an American novelist, playwright, and telegraphist. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a telegraph operator at Boston's Brunswick Hotel, and that practical knowledge gave her writing a distinctive spark.
Her best-known book, Wired Love: A Romance in Dots and Dashes (1879), was built around the world of telegraph operators and became a bestseller for years. Thayer also wrote for the stage, including The Lords of Creation and Amber, a Daughter of Bohemia in 1883, and she published short fiction in magazines as well.
She lived later in Saugus, Massachusetts, and died in Boston in 1925. Today she is often remembered as a writer who brought new technology, working women's lives, and a quietly progressive spirit into popular nineteenth-century storytelling.