KATHARINE LEE BATES - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 04/26/1927 - HFSID 262796
Sale Price $795.00
Reg. $950.00
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.
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