Frances Shaw

Frances Shaw was an American poet and philanthropist.

Life
Born Frances Wells, Shaw grew up in Chicago. She attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1893 she married architect Howard Shaw; the couple had three daughters: Evelyn (born 1893), Sylvia (1897), and Theodora (1912). The family lived in Chicago, in a duplex designed by her Howard Shaw, and spent their summers with his family at Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois.

As early as 1909 Frances Shaw had written and produced her first play, The Heir of Manville Grange: A peripeteitic play in four acts. She went on to write several other plays, and acted in the Lake Forest Players of Mary Aldis. Around 1912, Howard Shaw designed and built an outdoor theater, the Ragdale Ring, on the Ragdale property as a showcase for his wife's plays.

Frances Shaw was writing poetry by 1910, and her first collection (Ragdale Verses, a limited edition of 50 copies) was published by the Gothic Press of Lake Forest in 1911. Shaw and her husband financially supported Poetry magazine; Frances Shaw was also a friend and travelling companion of Poetry editor Harriet Monroe, and her daughter Evelyn worked for a time in the Poetry office.

Frances Shaw's work appeared in the March 1914 issue of Poetry, as well as in anthologies from the magazine. She also published in The Century magazine and the 1923 anthology The Soul of a City: an urban anthology.