Wellesley President Caroline Hazard Revising Poems for Periodical Publication, circa 1900

Caroline Hazard Wellesley College Women's Education

Manuscripts & Autographs

Hazard, Caroline autograph letter signed, circa 1900, documents women’s higher education and literary publication through correspondence between Wellesley College’s fifth president and John E. Bowen, editor of The Independent. Written during Hazard’s presidency, the letter shows the editorial process by which a woman educator and published poet negotiated textual revision, theological language, and periodical authorship, providing primary-source evidence for the study of women college presidents, women’s literary labor, and print culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Hazard became Wellesley president in 1899; during her eleven-year tenure, enrollment doubled, new departments and buildings were added, and faculty salaries improved.

Hazard, Caroline. Autograph letter signed. Peace Dale, Rhode Island: Oakwoods letterhead, January 12, circa 1900. 3 pages. 4.5 x 6.75 inches. Addressed to John E. Bowen, editor of The Independent, and signed, “I remain very truly yours, Caroline Hazard.” Hazard writes “in regard to a couple of changes in some verses of mine, for an early issue of The Independent,” accepting “The omission of two lines in ‘Southern Pines’” but objecting to changing “Mother” to “Father” in “Renewal,” explaining that “It changes the idea entirely” and adding, “Nature, I perceive, cannot be a father; but it surely can bask in the smile of the All Father.” The letter’s attention to wording, gendered metaphor, and religious meaning makes it a useful document of Hazard’s literary judgment as well as her public intellectual identity.

Written from Peace Dale, Rhode Island, Hazard’s birthplace and home community, the letter connects her presidency at one of the leading women’s colleges with her continuing work as a poet and author. Remains of prior mounting on blank verso, light toning, mailing folds, very good. A concise manuscript record of a prominent woman educator’s participation in periodical publication and literary revision during the expansion of women’s higher education.

Item #17055

Price: $420.00