Newton Arvin collection

(Frederick) Newton Arvin was born on August 9, 1900 in Valparaiso, Indiana. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1921, he taught private school in Detroit before joining the faculty at Smith College as an Instructor of English in 1922.

Over the next decade, his career soared. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and was subsequently named a full professor at Smith College (1940). In 1939 he became a trustee at Yaddo, a writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. While visiting in 1946 he met and began a two-year affair with Truman Capote. Capote's 1948 novel Other Voices, Other Rooms was dedicated to Arvin. Arvin went on to win the 1951 National Book Award in non-fiction for his book Herman Melville (1950).

As Margot Cleary wrote in Hampshire Life (1991), "Newton Arvin's life was a Jekyll and Hyde affair, a mixture of professional acclaim and personal scandal." Despite a brief marriage to Mary Jordan Garrison (Class of 1931), Arvin was living as a closeted gay man. The marriage ended in 1940 with both Garrison and Arvin suffering numerous breakdowns as a result.

During Labor Day weekend in 1960, police raided Arvin's home and confiscated thousands of pictures of male models that were considered pornographic. He was charged with possession and distribution of pornographic materials and though he initially pleaded innocent, he later accepted a finding of guilty. His arrest, and the confiscation of his journals, led to the arrests of several other men in the community including two colleagues at Smith College. The Board of Trustees voted to have Arvin 'retired' in 1960 to the vehement protest of prominent faculty, colleagues and alumnae. Arvin was admitted to Northampton State Hospital for suicidal depression and remained confined for the duration of the ordeal; diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he died March 21, 1963.