Sherry D. Engle's New Women Dramatists in America, 1890–1920 explores the lives and work of five women who were active during the Progressive Era: Martha Morton, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, Beulah Marie Dix, and Rida Johnson Young. With the exception of Morton, who ended the all-male reign of the American Dramatists Club by forming the more inclusive Society of Dramatic Authors, these are names that rarely appear in U.S. theatre histories. Engle does not make extravagant claims for these authors' work or profess to have uncovered neglected gems. Rather, she places their dramas in the context of early twentieth-century Broadway theatre, demonstrating how these women fulfilled, perpetuated, and in a few cases transcended audiences' expectations. Quoting from numerous contemporary reviews, Engle also gives us a clear sense of the critical climate at the turn of the previous century.

Engle's research is thorough and carefully documented. Each chapter includes a chronology of works by the author(s) discussed, and the Appendix provides an extensive list of the plays by women that appeared in New York between April 1885 and June 1925. Although this inventory overlooks several productions by Little Theaters like the Provincetown Players, it is an important resource for those interested in the commercial stage.

In the early twentieth century, few American theatregoers were ready for the dramas of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Change was in the wind at alternative venues like the Provincetown Players, but writers for Broadway (then and now) were obliged to appeal to the largest number of potential viewers. As a result, hardly any Broadway plays from this period have survived the test of time: even the wildly successful Clyde Fitch left no enduring classics. Martha Morton specialized in the light comedies audiences preferred—comedies in which, for example, marriage is the solution rather than the problem. Her greatest triumph, the 1896 A Bachelor's Romance, ends with the pairing of nearly every character, including a middle-aged literary critic and his young ward. It attracted enthusiastic crowds in England, was produced “well into the 1920s” (34) in this country, and was even turned into a film. Morton also attempted historical dramas and a “‘crook’ play” (47), genres that were nearly as popular as romantic comedies. Like her more famous contemporary Rachel Crothers, Morton helped stage many of her own productions—a notable achievement in an era when female directors were even less common than women playwrights.

London-born Madeleine Lucette Ryley began her theatre career as a performer, later writing a number of romantic comedies that found moderate success on both sides of the Atlantic. Like most American dramatists during this period, Ryley often tailored her plays to specific actors, a practice that hampered the creative process and limited the plays' long-term appeal. Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland and Beulah Marie Dix, who wrote separately and as collaborators, had similarly mixed careers. According to Engle, their specialties “were historical romances or ‘costume’ plays” (99–100), popular forms that eventually disappeared from the stage, perhaps because they were better realized on the big screen. In fact their most successful collaboration, The Road to Yesterday (1906), was filmed by Cecil B. DeMille two decades later. Most notable about Dix's solo career were her antiwar plays, including Across the Border and Moloch, written in the years before the United States entered World War I. Dix, along with many of her contemporaries, questioned the wisdom of a war that promised to accomplish little while destroying countless lives. She was also one of a number of female playwrights, including Louise Bryant, Rita Wellman, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, who dared to write about war, often considered an exclusively male subject.

In many ways the most interesting of the five women that Engle discusses is Rida Johnson Young, a lyricist and author of more than thirty plays and musicals. Her 1909 comedy The Lottery Man ran for two hundred performances in New York and proved so popular that the producers “sent out four road companies” (157). Young also wrote the book and lyrics for the operetta Naughty Marietta, for which Victor Herbert composed the music. Her song “Mother Machree,” which spawned both her own short story and a John Ford film based on that story, remains a sentimental favorite even today. Popular plays and musicals such as Brown of Harvard, Sometime, and Little Old New York provided star parts for actors such as Mae West and Ed Wynn while making Rida Johnson Young a rich woman.

Martha Morton and Rida Johnson Young achieved notable careers despite critical prejudice that was sometimes patently ridiculous: reviewer Alan Dale, for one, speculated that women couldn't write fantasy because “it needs the delicate touch of the ‘sterner’ sex” (131). All five of the women's careers, as Engle convincingly argues, give “insight into what Progressive Era audiences enjoyed and preferred for their dramatic fare” (11). In varying degrees, Morton, Young, and their colleagues were smart enough to discern what Broadway theatregoers wanted and talented enough to fulfill those cravings.