KATHARINE LEE BATES - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 08/04/1924 - HFSID 271448

KATHARINE LEE BATES
The author of "America the Beautiful" seeks a chairman for the costuming committee for Wellesley College's semi-centennial
Typed letter signed: "Katharine Lee Bates", 1p, 5½x8½. Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1924 August 4. On letterhead of Wellesley College, Department of English Literature to Mrs. Fred Wilson, Nahant, Massachusetts. In full: "The college is making ready to observe its Semi-Centennial next May, by a leading feature of the celebration being a pageant written by Mrs. Marie Warren Potter of New York. She has a very beautiful theme, but has been delayed in her work by the long continued illness of her mother; so that we are sending out an SOS call to our most competent alumnae. Miss Katherine Jones tells me that you would be a wonderful chairman for the Costuming Committee. Are your plans for next year such that you could consider undertaking it? I tried to get Miss Jones herself, but she proposes to go to Italy early in the winter and insists that you would be both artistic and efficient, and would know how to gather about you a group of alumnae workers. Can you give me any hope? Faithfully yours". Additions and corrections in bold in Bates' hand. 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. Lightly creased with folds, minor creases at signature. Fine condition.