Jesse Lynch Williams (August 17, 1871 – September 14, 1929) was an American author and dramatist. He won the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Why Marry? (1917). He was a journalist for three New York publications and co-founded the Princeton Alumni Weekly and the Princeton Triangle Club.
Early life
Williams was born in Sterling, Illinois, on August 17, 1871, to Elizabeth Brown (Riddle) and Rev. Meade Creighton Williams, pastor of a Presbyterian church in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his bachelor's degree in 1892. As a graduate student at Princeton University, he wrote Princeton Stories (1895) He received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Princeton in 1919. Why Not explores the experiences of divorce. Lovely Lady is about the attempts of a lady to attract the attentions of a lawyer and his son. They lived in Princeton, New Jersey. Alice graduated from Veltin School for Girls in 1892. She was a member of the Audubon Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and a number of organizations, including sitting on the executive board of the New Jersey Equal Franchise Society. or Herkimer, New York.