George Cram Cook

George Cram Cook or Jig Cook (October 7, 1873 – January 14, 1924) was an American novelist, poet, and playwright. He was a lover of ancient Greece, an idealist who dreamt of spiritual communism.

Cook was born in Davenport, Iowa. He was the son of a wealthy family. His father, a corporate lawyer, strongly encouraged his education from a young age. He completed his bachelor's degree at Harvard in 1893. He continued his studies at the University of Heidelberg in 1894 and at the University of Geneva the following year.

Upon completing his education Cook taught English literature at the University of Iowa from 1895 until 1899. He was also an English professor at Stanford University during the 1902 academic year.

With his wife, dramatist Susan Glaspell, Cook established the Provincetown Players in 1915, an important step in the development of theatre in the United States. The group would perform works by Cook and Glaspell as well as Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay, among others. Cook would lead the Provincetown Players until 1919, at which time he took a sabbatical. Although he returned to the group in 1920, internal wrangling and his own frustration led to his effectively abandoning the cooperative to move to Greece in 1922. He lived at Delphi, stirring up Greek nationalism in what was then a rural village. After a short time, he began to dress in the traditional shepherd's costume. He and Glaspell spent the entire summers camped in Spruce huts high up on the mountains above the town. In 1924, Cook became ill with glanders and died. He is buried at Delphi.

Cook's poetry appears in the volume Greek Coins: Poems of George Cram Cook published posthumously in 1925 by George H. Doran Company; the book includes a photographic frontispiece portrait of the author and three essays by Floyd Dell, Edna Kenton, and Susan Glaspell.