Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford papers
Scope and Contents
The Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford Collection consists of .5 linear feet of letters, manuscript poems and print materials related to Harriet Prescott Spofford. Also included in the collection are letters and literary manuscripts of Richard Smith Spofford.
SERIES I. LETTERS: This series contains letters written by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford to various individuals. It is arranged in chronological order.
SERIES II. WRITINGS: This series contains a number of manuscripts of Spofford's poems.
SERIES III. PRINT MATERIALS: This series contains some printed advertisements.
SERIES IV. RICHARD SMITH SPOFFORD: This series contains letters and manuscripts by Richard Smith Spofford, husband of Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford, as well as print materials.
Dates of Materials
- 1862-1920
Creator
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open to research according to the regulations of the Mortimer Rare Book Room.
Conditions Governing Use
The Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford Collection is the physical property of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors of the works or their legal representatives.
Biographical / Historical
Harriet Elizabeth Prescott was born in Calais, Maine, on April 3, 1835. She moved with her parents to Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1849 where she attended the Putnam Free School. She also attended the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire (1853-1855). When her parents became infirm and the family's finances problematic, Prescott started to write. With encouragement from Thomas W. S. Higginson, her stories appeared in the Boston newspapers and later in the Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, Sir Rohan's Ghost, appeared anonymously in 1860. Other novels followed and her work (poems, essays, stories and travel writings) appeared in the Atlantic, Scribner's, Century and other leading magazines of the day.
In 1865 she married Richard Smith Spofford, Jr. (1833-1888), a Boston lawyer and sometime author. They resided on Deer Island, Amesbury, Massachusetts. Harriet Spofford continued to write and travel. It is at the Deer Island home that she died on August 14, 1921.
Extent
1 boxes (.5 linear feet)
Abstract
Author, Poet. Letters, manuscript poems and print materials related to Harriet Prescott Spofford. Also included in the collection are letters and literary manuscripts of Richard Smith Spofford.
Arrangement
This collection is organized into four series:
- SERIES I. LETTERS
- SERIES II. WRITINGS
- SERIES III. PRINT MATERIALS
- SERIES IV. RICHARD SMITH SPOFFORD
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford Collection was initially created from gifts by John Lancaster in memory of Ruth Mortimer (Smith College Class of 1953) in 1994-1995, and is added to with purchases by the Mortimer Rare Book Room.
Additions to the Collection
Collection is added to periodically with purchases by the Mortimer Rare Book Room.
Processing Information
Processed by Melvin Carlson, Jr., 2007
Creator
- Title
- Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford papers
- Subtitle
- Finding Aid
- Author
- Melvin Carlson, Jr.
- Date
- 2007
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
Repository Details
Part of the Mortimer Rare Book Collection Repository
