Maine Women Writers Collection @UNE

The Maine Women Writers Collection is a special collection of published and unpublished literary, cultural, and social history sources by and about Maine women. We collect the work of new, established, and historical women writers & foster archives-based scholarly work in women’s and gender studies. www.une.edu/mwwc

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To our loyal Tumblr followers, we have decided to let go of our Tumblr account, because, well...honestly...we aren’t very good at it! Maine Women Writers Collection is active on other social media platforms, so we hope to see you all around the big world wide web. We love you, Tumbr! We love you all.

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October is American Archives Month! There are so many great things about the primary sources found in archives that it's hard to know where to start. Here's a suggestion: handwriting! Come practice the dying art of reading someone's messy scrawl! The more you do it, the better you get. You can practice on this 1946 diary entry from Eva Twist (to whet your appetite, she mentions hot drop biscuits!)

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In our efforts to digitally archive a treasure trove of photographs from Lael Morgan's Alaska, we came across this one labeled "Shanon Gallant Hat". 

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At the risk of sounding too morbid, I've been appreciating this map of Picton Cemetery in New South Wales that was sent to Lael Morgan as she conducted research on Tonga. I love the demarcation for "Wattle and scrub" and even the arrow denoting...gulp...future graves.

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Today's treasure: this beautiful 2 inch x 1 inch photo found in Representative Men: Seven Lectures (1850) by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Written on the back of the photo in pencil: "Cliff Hubbard III in Tante's house". My heart breaks for that little guy!

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Today's staples removed from Lael Morgan's Montana research. Note in background: my poor, exhausted staple remover who needs a nap.

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From Martha Hall & Allison Cooke Brown's "Paper Passages." The book dates from September 10, 2001 - September 14, 2001.

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Happy birthday to Ann Beattie!

Here's an interview from the Portland Press Herald earlier this summer on the release of her most recent book of stories, The Accomplished Guest. She's asked what makes a great short story. Beattie answers: "From the writer’s end...doing something that’s beyond what you’re capable of in that moment, and doing it anyway. I mean, athletes will tell you that happens all the time. They’ll go out to run, and they’ll say 'I don’t know why it was a bad day,' and they attribute it to things that can’t be proved or disproved, like psychological resistance or fear of success. I think these things are universally true that people don’t know why they just can’t get things to work some of the time."

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In our continuing series of posts highlighting the World War I centennial letters from the Elizabeth Coatsworth collection, today's letter comes from the YMCA. An unnamed friend (who signed the letter "I Am You Know Who") volunteered as a nurse for troops returning from Europe. It sounded like a rowdy time: "We have 3 tea fights a week in this hut; yesterday...a black dog...ran thru [sic] the tea party...One woman asked if he'd bite. I told her he'd tear you to ribbon, whereupon she murmured mercy and retired."

Notice the advice at the bottom of the stationary to use BOTH sides of the paper, and to save food, buy liberty bonds and war savings stamps.

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As the last four months of 2017 begin, we'd like to highlight a few of our World War I centennial letters from the Elizabeth Coatsworth collection. The war didn't directly affect Coatsworth much, however it did many of her friends. This is a letter from Robert Seaman in March of 1918, updating Coatsworth on their mutual friends.

The letter is dated, appropriately in light of Hurricane Harvey, "Sunday/Nothing but rain", and goes on to talk about Ronnie who "was gassed Sept. 30 and in a hospital and convalescent camps almost 3 months his heart was bad but as he says 'I'm all right now.'"

Ronnie "had the plate shot off his gun and got a dent in his helmet, can you beat it. Gosh we're glad he's home. He has boots that are rug destroyers."

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Today is the birthday of Abbie S. Beede, who served as the typist and friend of Sarah Orne Jewett from 1900 to 1903. Beede, like Jewett, never married and lived in North Berwick, Maine with a female cousin. The Collection has 24 letters from Jewett to Beede, mainly discussing Jewett's writing projects, however they also display an evolving friendship between the two women.

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One of the treasures in our recent acquisition of books from the Kate Barnes house is this 2009 Italian edition of poems by Gary Lawless (published by Lato Selvatico "Libraria" with drawings by Stephen Petroff). The poems are both in Italian and English. Anyone care to practice your Italian?

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As today's solar eclipse nears, we dug up a diary entry from Maine's last solar eclipse, July 20, 1963. Dorothy Wright Simes, of Cape Elizabeth, enjoyed a cocktail with her eclipse. Wish we had cocktails here, but alas, we'll be working!

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from The Log, August 17th, 1924. Camp Moy Ma Da Yo. "Oh that blessed bed on Saturday night!" We hear you, sister! Love the bed.

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Today a researcher came in to look at our Camp Moy Mo Da Yo collection. The camp, located in Cornish, Maine, is celebrating its 110th anniversary next weekend! Oh, the glory days of summer camp!

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So, there are some people around here who suggest all I do is post about Elizabeth Coatsworth! BUT HOW CAN YOU BLAME ME? There is so much cool stuff in this newly-acquired material to her collection. Trust me, I'm restraining myself! But today I couldn't resist this 1932 USGS map of Knox County, which even shows the former Criehaven, aka Bennett's Island of Elizabeth Ogilvie's beloved novels.

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You still have a few weeks left of the summer season to visit Petite Plaisance, the Northeast Harbor home of Marguerite Yourcenar on Mount Desert Island. The home is immaculately maintained exactly as Madame Yourcenar left it on the day she died in 1987 (her bags were packed for a trip to Nepal!). The house is staffed by incredibly knowledgeable and friendly Yourcenar scholars, and it even has a really beautiful bird house!