Girls’ Education and Friendship Culture in Edith LaRue’s Michigan Memory Album, 1888 to 1892

Women's Education' Handwritten Poems

Manuscripts & Autographs

LaRue, Edith memory album, 1888 to 1892, documents girls’ education, school friendship, and adolescent memory culture in Bear Lake, Michigan, during the late nineteenth century. Kept by a female student and filled by classmates and friends, the album records how young women used autograph books to preserve school relationships, moral sentiment, poetry, and parting messages in a period when female education was becoming a more visible part of American social life.

LaRue, Edith. Memory album. Bear Lake, Michigan, 1888 to 1892. Handwritten autograph album with 18 manuscript entries from friends and classmates. Decorative cover with color portrait of a girl holding a letter and gilt title “Autographs.” 80 pages. 5 x 8 inches. Original 6 x 4 inch black-and-white portrait photograph of the album owner pasted inside front cover, with “Edith LaRue” written in blue ink along the lower edge. Includes color illustrations and decorative cutouts pasted throughout, including hands, books, letters, birds, bouquets, and an American flag, as well as a loose portrait photograph of a young man. Entries include schoolmate inscriptions and conventional friendship verse, including: “Your album is a garden spot, Where all your friends may sow. So I will plant forget me not, And see if it will grow.”

The album offers a localized record of schoolgirl sociability and the sentimental forms through which young women marked educational transitions before modern yearbooks became standard. Only the last few pages remain attached to the binding; dampstaining appears at the upper right corner of pages from the middle toward the rear, good to very good. A useful documentary artifact of girls’ education, friendship inscription, and female student identity in late nineteenth-century Michigan.

Item #17016

Price: $485.00