Edward Albee was born in
Washington, D.C. and was adopted two weeks later and taken to
Westchester County, New York. Albee's adoptive father,
Reed A. Albee, himself the son of vaudeville magnate
Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theatres, where Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother was Reed's third wife, Frances. Albee left home when he was in his late teens, later saying in an interview, "They weren't very good at being parents, and I wasn't very good at being a son." He attended the
Rye Country Day School, then the
Lawrenceville School, where he was expelled. He attended
Valley Forge Military Academy in
Wayne, Pennsylvania in 1943 and graduated in 1945 at the age of 17. He studied at
Choate Rosemary Hall and graduated in 1946, then attended
Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut for a year and a half before being expelled for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel in 1947. Perhaps ironically, the less than diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre, frequently speaking at campuses and serving as a distinguished professor at the
University of Houston from 1989 to 2003.
A member of the
Dramatists Guild Council, Albee has received three
Pulitzer Prizes for
drama — for
A Delicate Balance (1967),
Seascape (1975),
Three Tall Women (1994); a Special
Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005); the Gold Medal in Drama from the
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as the
Kennedy Center Honors and the
National Medal of Arts (both in 1996).
Albee is the President of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc., which maintains the
William Flanagan Creative Persons Center, a writers and artists colony in
Montauk, New York. Albee's longtime partner, Jonathan Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, the result of a two year-long battle with
bladder cancer.
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