Celia Logan

Celia Logan Connelly (born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 17, 1837; died New York City, New York, June 18, 1904) was an American actress, playwright, and writer, and a member of the Logan family of actors and writers.

Raised mostly in Cincinnati where her father Cornelius Ambrosius Logan ran the National Theatre, Celia Logan came from a theatrical family; her father and older sister Eliza were already well-known actors when Celia first appeared on the stage in March 1852, at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.[1] Her marriage to actor Conrad B. Clarke in December 1852 was ended by his death of consumption in November 1859.[2] After a few years of acting she travelled to Europe where she obtained a position reading manuscripts for a London publisher. While in London she was acquainted with author Charles Reade, who encouraged her to write. On February 17, 1858 she married painter and art collector Miner Kilbourne Kellogg, more than 20 years her senior, in Paris. They had one child, Virginia Somers Kellogg, born April 25, 1860 in London. She became a London correspondent for several American newspapers. The Kelloggs returned to America after the Civil War and settled in Washington, where they were divorced in December 1865. Miner Kellogg retained custody of their child.

Logan soon returned to London, where she returned to the stage in 1868. After acting for a few seasons, she returned to newspaper work and writing for American magazines. In 1872 she married James H. Connelly (1840-1903), a journalist, writer, and Theosophist. Moving to San Francisco, James Connelly became the editor of the Morning Chronicle while Celia became a correspondent for the New York Graphic and continued to write. While in San Francisco Celia wrote her first plays (Rose and The Old Trick), which were produced with success in San Francisco and elsewhere. Returning to New York, she became an assistant editor at Belford's Magazine, a project of Abram S. Piatt and his brother Donn, who had earlier employed her at the Capital newspaper in Washington, DC. She also continued to write, as a journalist, as an author, and as a playwright. Her most successful plays were Gaston Cadol (an adaption from the French) and An American Marriage (1884) (later titled That Man). She had much success as a translator and adapter of French novels and plays.

Like her sister Olive, she wrote of her experiences in the theatre, writing a series of articles entitled "These Our Actors"[3] and also lecturing on the subject.[4]

Logan was involved with the Ladies Lecture Bureau, an organization which organized lectures and events to raise awareness of and relief funds for the Irish famine. Logan helped organize a benefit at New York City's Grand Opera House January 22, 1880 with Cynthia Leonard; afterwards, the Bureau collapsed amid accusations by Logan and others that Leonard kept some of the money.[5]

Works

References

  1. ↑ The New York Dramatic Mirror, July 2, 1904, p. 13, column 4
  2. ↑ History of the American Stage, T. Allston Brown, New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1870, entry "Conrad B. Clarke", p. 70
  3. ↑ American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies with over 1,400 Portraits", volume 2, eds. Frances Willard and Mary Livermore, New York: Mast, Crowell, and Kirkpatrick, 1897 (revised), entry "Mrs. Celia Logan", p. 470
  4. ↑ Music and Drama: A Review, Volume IV, #2 (October 14, 1883), p. 8, "A Lecture on Actresses"
  5. ↑ New York Times, January 27, 1880, "The Grand Opera-House Benefit: Trouble Among the Managers and Some of the Money Missing"