author
Wilbur Gleason Zeigler
1857–1935
Best remembered for the 1895 novel It Was Marlowe, this American writer helped launch the Marlovian theory that Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. His work ranged from literary speculation to regional history and firsthand reporting on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
2 Audiobooks
The Heart of the Alleghanies; or, Western North Carolina
by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler, Ben S. Grosscup
It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries
by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler
About the author
Born in Ohio, Wilbur Gleason Zeigler was an American lawyer and writer whose career moved across fiction, history, and cultural commentary. He is most often noted today for It Was Marlowe (1895), a novel with a provocative preface and notes that argued for what became known as the Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship.
Zeigler also wrote beyond literary controversy. His books included work on Ohio history and on western North Carolina, showing a broad interest in places, communities, and the stories people tell about them.
He later lived in San Francisco and survived the 1906 earthquake, an experience he turned into writing about the disaster. Although some details of his life are presented inconsistently in modern sources, his reputation as a curious, wide-ranging writer remains clear.