KATHARINE LEE BATES - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 04/26/1927 - HFSID 262796

KATHARINE LEE BATES
The author of "America the Beautiful" pens a personal letter to a friend, dated in 1927
Autograph letter signed: "Katharine Lee Bates", 1½ p, 4¼x5¾. Wellesley, 1927 April 26. To Miss Bridgman. In full: "Your letter is so kind that I can't be as sorry as I ought to for having made you unnecessary trouble. Ethel Brown tells me that there is an elevator at the Club. Others have told me there wasn't, but Ethel insists that there is and that Abbie herself used it when she gave her farewell reading there. So I hope I go in after all and have just written directly to Dr. Van Allen about it that you might be spared any further concern. It will be good to see and hear you again." KATHARINE LEE BATES (1859-1929), who had joined the faculty of Wellesley College as Professor of English Literature in 1886, is best known for writing "America the Beautiful". Inspired by a trip to Pike's Peak with three fellow Wellesley professors in the summer of 1893, Bates had written all four stanzas of the poem by the time she left Colorado Springs. First printed in the July 4, 1895 issue of "The Congregationalist" newspaper, "America the Beautiful" was revised by Bates in 1904 and 1911. "Miss Bridgman" is likely poet AMY BRIDGMAN, best known for her poem, "John Masefield", which appeared in Poems of Massachusetts. Lightly creased. Stray inkblots. Erased notes (unknown hand) at blank margins. Fine condition.