Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Victoria Sackville-West Materials., Victoria Sackville-West, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The collection contains 27 letters and 4 greeting cards of personal correspondence written between 1947-1961, from V. Sackville-West at her home at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, U.K., to Grace Mountcastle Martin in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Many of the letters convey the author's thanks for shipments of sugar and soap during times of rationing in the U.K.

V. [Victoria or "Vita"] Sackville-West, English poet, novelist, socialite and suffragette, was born in 1892 at her family's estate at Knole in Kent. Privately educated, she began writing poetry at age 11, and had produced 8 novels and 5 plays by the time of her …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Lilla Cabot Perry Materials., Lilla Cabot Perry, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The Collection of Lilla Cabot Perry Materials contains clippings, correspondence, two diaries, published and unpublished manuscripts, a memorial exhibit document, two portrait paintings (William Dean Howells, Edwin Arlington Robinson) and photograph items.

Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933) was born in Boston, a member of the prominent Cabot family. She married Thomas Sargeant Perry, a literature professor at Harvard, and through him became friends with writers such as Henry James and William Dean Howells. Perry wrote several volumes of poetry: "Heart of the Weed" (1886), "From the Garden of Hellas" (1891), "Impressions" (1898), and "Jar of Dreams" (1923). Primarily known as an …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Celia Thaxter Materials, Celia Thaxter, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Celia Laighton Thaxter, 1835-1894, was an American poet and prose writer. Born Celia Laighton in Portsmouth, N.H., she spent her childhood on White Island Lighthouse, part of Isles of Shoals, and Appledore Island. At 16 she married Levi Thaxter and had three sons, Karl, John, and Roland. The family spent winters on the mainland in Massachusetts, where Celia felt imprisoned by domestic duties in a city house. Her first poem, "Land-locked," was published in 1860 and was an immediate success. Soon she became widely published, with poems appearing in Harper's, Scribner's, and the Atlantic. With the means to spend more …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Louise Helen Coburn Materials, Louise Helen Coburn, Colby College Special Collections

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Louise Helen Coburn was born in Skowhegan, Maine on September 1, 1856, daughter of Stephen Coburn and Helen Sophia Miller. Coburn was Colby's second female graduate (after Mary Low Carver) in 1877, and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors. She also later received an honorary Litt. D. degree from Colby in 1914. Coburn's family was deeply tied to Colby College. Her father Stephen graduated in 1839, and the Coburn family was critical to Colby's early development as benefactors. Coburn was a co-founder, along with Mary Low Carver and others, of the Sigma Kappa Sorority. Coburn also later attended the Harvard …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Robert Underwood Johnson Materials, Robert Underwood Johnson, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Robert Underwood Johnson, author, conservationist, and diplomat, was born in New York in 1853. For more than forty years he was associated with The Century Magazine. Associate Editor under Richard Watson Gilder, he succeeded to the editorship from 1909-1913. Using the influence of The Century Magazine, Underwood, in conjunction with famed naturalist John Muir, was one of the driving forces behind the creation of Yosemite National Park in the California in 1890. In 1889, Johnson also encouraged Muir to "start an association" to help protect the Sierra Nevada, inspiring the formation of the Sierra Club in 1892. In 1920-1921 he …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Sir Edmund William Gosse Materials, Sir Edmund William Gosse, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928) was an English biographer and critic. He was lecturer in English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge (1884–90) and librarian of the House of Lords (1904–14). Although he wrote with enthusiasm and wit, his scholarship was often inaccurate and thus much of his critical work has been superseded. He did, however, introduce English readers to Ibsen and other Scandinavian writers as well as to some modern French writers and painters. Among the many biographies he wrote were those of Gray (1882), Donne (1899), Sir Thomas Browne (1905), Ibsen (1907), Swinburne (1917), and Congreve (rev. ed. 1924). …