Katherine Garrison Chapin

Katherine Garrison Chapin (September 4, 1890December 30, 1977), sometimes known by her married name Katherine Biddle, was an American poet, librettist, and playwright. She is best known for two collaborations with composer William Grant Still: And They Lynched Him on a Tree (1940) and Plain-Chant for America (1941). Chapin began publishing poems in the late 1920s, in the popular press and in literary journals including Poetry. Many of her works, including her two joint compositions with Still, were musical libretti. Her corpus covers a variety of subjects, but evinces a particular fascination with politics and racial justice. Critics regarded her work as skilled, traditional, and somewhat lacking in feeling. Life Family Katherine Garrison Chapin was born to a wealthy, well-connected family in Gilded Age New York. Her mother Cornelia Garrison Van Auken (1865–1925) was an actress. Her father Lindley Hoffman Chapin (1854–1896) was a Manhattan lawyer who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1874. Her parents were married on February 14, 1888, at 421 Fifth Avenue, Cornelia's family home.