Rachel Baker Gale

Born Rachel E. Baker in 1858, she was the daughter of Boston playwright and publisher George Melville Baker, and she grew up close to the world of popular home and amateur theater. After her father’s death, she also completed After Taps from his unfinished manuscript and notes.

Rachel Baker Gale became known for writing at least a dozen parlor plays and comedies, including works such as Mr. Bob, A King’s Daughter, Coats and Petticoats, Her Picture, and The Clinging Vine. These plays were widely suited to school, club, and amateur performance, which helped keep her name circulating among readers and performers even when she was not a major literary celebrity.

She died in 1923. Modern reference sources note that some of her plays expressed opposition to women’s suffrage and to broader public roles for women, which makes her work an interesting window into the cultural arguments of her era as well as its entertainment.