Delia Bacon
Delia Bacon (1811-1859) was an American writer and lecturer known for her controversial theories regarding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Born in Ohio and raised in Connecticut, her early life was marked by poverty after the death of her father. Despite these challenges, she received a quality education and pursued various teaching endeavors before shifting her focus to writing and public speaking. Bacon gained recognition for her collection of short fiction, *Tales of the Puritans*, and her dramatic work, *The Bride of Fort Edward*.
Her most notable contribution, however, was her theory that Shakespeare's works were not penned by him, but rather by a group of writers led by Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, influenced by Francis Bacon. This perspective aimed to reveal a subversive political message within the plays. Bacon's pursuit of evidence for her claims took her to England, where she sought to establish her theory despite facing significant skepticism. Her 1857 book, *The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded*, was largely ridiculed, and Bacon eventually struggled with mental health issues. She spent her final years institutionalized before passing away shortly after her book's release.
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Delia Bacon
Writer
- Born: February 2, 1811
- Birthplace: Tallmadge, Ohio
- Died: September 2, 1859
- Place of death: Hartford, Connecticut
Biography
Born in a small town Ohio, Delia Salter Bacon was raised in Connecticut; her father died when she was six, and she and her mother and five siblings were plunged into poverty. Her brother, Leonard Bacon, would eventually become a famous Congregationalist minister and a leading opponent of slavery. Due to her family’s dire financial circumstances, Bacon was raised in part by a well-to-do woman in Hartford and attended an excellent girl’s school run by the famous educator Catharine Beecher, the sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, until she was fifteen years old. Subsequently, for a number of years afterward she attempted unsuccessfully to establish a school of her own with her sister in a number of places. Failing in this endeavor, she turned to writing. She published a collection of short fiction, Tales of the Puritans, in 1831, and later published a dramatic work, The Bride of Fort Edward (1839), written as a closet drama (meant to be read rather than acted on the stage). However, her main means of support became paid public lectures on literature. Charismatic, attractive, and enthusiastic, her great energy made her a successful and sought-after lecturer and eventually brought her into the orbits of other New England literary luminaries, such as the famous Transcendentalist essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.
During her time spent as a lecturer, Bacon developed the theory that secured her lasting fame (or infamy): she came to believe that the plays of Shakespeare were not actually written by the Bard of Avon himself, but rather by a cabal of writers headed up by renaissance poets Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, whose ideas and views were formed by essayist and philosopher Francis Bacon. The point of the plays, she felt, was to publish, in a subversive, subtle, and almost subliminal way, a liberal political-philosophical framework of beliefs that would radically challenge the political system at the time the plays were performed.
Bacon was so convinced in the validity of her argument that she traveled to England, where she spent more than three years trying to prove her thesis. During this time she befriended philosopher Thomas Carlyle and fiction writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who served with the American Consulate in Liverpool. At one point, Bacon was convinced that she could find her answers by digging up Shakespeare’s bones (or possibly Raleigh’s or Bacon’s), and actually had access to his tomb, but ultimately could not follow through with the exhumation. Though supportive of Bacon’s quest, Hawthorne never subscribed to her theories; even so, he helped her eventually publish the convoluted book describing her theories, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, in 1857. The book was met almost universally with scorn. Always frail and often in poor health, before long Bacon suffered some form of severe mental breakdown and was institutionalized, first in England and then later in the United States. She died within two years of her book’s publication.