Collection context
Summary
- Creator:
- Bradley, Louise, 1908-1979 and Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979
- Abstract:
- The Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bradley Collection, 1924-1979, consists of letters and other writings by poet Elizabeth Bishop, 1911-1979, and the 1930-1933 diary of her friend Louise Bradley, 1908-1979.
- Extent:
- 2 Linear Feet (2 boxes)
- Language:
- Materials are in English.
- Preferred citation:
[item], Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bradley Collection, Wylie House Museum, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington.
Background
- Biographical / Historical:
Louise Bradley, 1908-1979, was born to Marie Boisen (granddaughter of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie) and Morton Clark Bradley, Sr., in Arlington, Massachusetts, on 27 February 1908. She befriended poet Elizabeth Bishop in 1924, when the two were teenagers at Camp Chequesset on Cape Cod. For the 1926-1927 academic year, Louise attended Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where her parents had met while in college. She then transferred to Radcliffe College and moved back into her parents' house in Arlington, Massachusetts. An avid writer, Louise developed her craft while a student at Radcliffe, where she served as editor-in-chief of The Radcliffe Daily. She graduated from college in 1930 and spent the next several years helping literary historian Ralph L. Rusk research Ralph Waldo Emerson for Rusk's publications of Emerson's letters and biography, which won the National Book Award in 1950. To help with the war effort during World War II, she became a research worker for Raytheon Corporation and continued working there for the rest of career. Louise never married and lived in her parents' home until her death on 3 December 1979. She is buried at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Arlington, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Bishop, 1911-1979, was born to Gertrude Bulmer and William Bishop in Worcester, Massachusetts, on 8 February 1911. Due to her father's early death and her mother's mental illness, Bishop was raised by a succession of family members. She initially lived with her mother's parents in Great Village, Nova Scotia, then with her father's parents in Worcester, Massachusetts, and finally with her aunt and uncle, Maude Bulmer and George Shepherdson, in Revere and Cliftondale, Massachusetts. She attended Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts, before entering Vassar College in 1930. She traveled in Europe after her college graduation and later lived in Key West, Florida, and Brazil before moving back to Boston. Over the course of her career, she served as the Poet Laureate of the United States (1949-1950) and was the recipient of several awards including the Pulitzer Prize of Poetry (1956), National Book Winner (1970), the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1976), and two Guggenheim Fellowships (1947 and 1978). She died in Boston on 6 October 1979 and is buried in Hope Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts.
- Scope and Content:
I. Correspondence consists of sixty items (fifty-six letters and four envelopes whose contents are missing) sent by Elizabeth Bishop to Louise Bradley, one letter from Bishop to Bradley's mother, and one unsent letter from Bradley to Bishop. In the letters, Bishop writes about schoolwork, summer camp, college, literature, poetry, travel, and friendships. She also mentions meeting with famous poets Marianne Moore and T. S. Eliot while a student at Vassar College. One letter includes a copy of the November 1933 issue of Con Spirito, the literary magazine Bishop started with her friends at Vassar. This series also includes seven undated poems Bishop sent to Bradley.
II. Clippings consists of ten items related to Bishop that Bradley saved from magazines or newspapers. These include seven clippings of Bishop's poems from The New Yorker, part of a New Yorker article about Bishop winning the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship for her book North and South in 1946, and two clippings from The Boston Globe about Bishop after her death in 1979.
III. Louise Bradley's Diary consists of the diary Bradley kept between 1930 and 1933. She periodically mentions Elizabeth Bishop (whom she calls by her Camp Chequesset nickname, "Bishie"). Subjects include writing aspirations, studies at Radcliffe College, poet Robert Hillyer, work as a research assistant, illnesses, family relationships, books, and studies in psychology and sociology. The Wylie House has digital copies of the sections of this diary that are held by the Arlington Historical Society in Arlington, Massachusetts; those sections are noted in the inventory and transcription.
- Acquisition information:
- This collection was bequeathed to the Wylie House Museum by Louise Bradley's brother, Morton C. Bradley, Jr., upon his death in September 2004.
- Processing information:
Processed by Jo Burgess in 2014. Updated by Mary McSparran in 2021.
- Arrangement:
The collection is arranged chronologically.
Indexed Terms
- Subjects:
- American literature--20th Century
Women poets, American
20th Century --Correspondence - Names:
- Vassar College
Indiana University Bloomington
Radcliffe College
Bradley, Louise, 1908-1979
Moore, Marianne, 1887-1972
Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965
Hillyer, Robert, 1895-1961 - Places:
- Camps--Massachusetts
Boston, Massachusetts
Access
- RESTRICTIONS:
-
This collection is open for research. Advance notice is required.
- TERMS OF ACCESS:
-
For reproduction and use policy, contact Wylie House Museum Director.
- PREFERRED CITATION:
-
[item], Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bradley Collection, Wylie House Museum, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington.
- CAMPUS:
- Indiana University Bloomington
- LOCATION OF THIS COLLECTION:
-
317 East 2nd StreetBloomington, Indiana 47401, United States
- CAMPUS:
- Indiana University Bloomington
- CONTACT:
-
812-855-6224libwylie@indiana.edu