Author Meigs Cornelia

her retirement in 1950. Subsequently she taught writing at the New School of Social Research in New York City. Most of her papers are at the Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College[5], but some of her papers may also be found in the libraries of the University of Iowa, and at the de Grummond Library at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. There are other small bits of correspondence stored with the collections of the persons or families to whom she sent them. For a glimpse into her life, here is a 2005 estate-sale-find letter sent to an Albert Northrop, presumed husband to her niece Elizabeth (Betty): January 29, 1950. Dear Albert, Your nice birthday letter should have had an answer long before this, but so many things do seem to come between me and writing even the letters that I want to much to write. The birthday was a very portentous one, my sixty-fifth, which means I am no longer eligible for Bryn Mawr after June; they have to keep me until then. By a singular chance they have given me more work to do than ever before, quite regardless of the fact that in six months I shall be considered totally unfit. I have so many ideas about what it would be nice to do next that I find it hard to sort out those which are really practical, so for I have been basking in the idea that the world was mine - within certain reasonable limits - now I am to be my own mistress again. To tell the truth I had never thought I was going to stick it out to the end, I thought if I could stay until Timmy (her sister Emily Fales --ed) got well and the children were more or less grown up that would be all. But here I am hanging on to the last season and not feeling withered or aged at all. Just before Christmas I had a visit from Florence Irwin[6] and felt that I had got very well up to date on all things having to do with Keokuk. It has changed so completely - except the climate - that I doubt whether I could ever consider going back there to stay though I had meant to when I went away. A few of the old feuds seem to survive, but even those cannot hold out forever. You were so good to speak so kindly of Violent Men and Two Arrows. The former had been in hand for a very long time, quite the largest piece of work I had ever undertaken, but it has been the one that I most enjoyed. I have a real passion for history, which grows as the yars go by, and was whetted ever more by my seeing some of it being made first hand while I was doing a very humble job in Washington. I realized that if I did not finish it while I was at Bryn Mawr I never would, so I finally succeeded in gtting t finished and out of my hands. Te Macmillan Company had it for a long time before they published it, so, since I had promised a child's book as the very next thing, I wrote that last year and they came out rather embarrassingly close together. You were a very good friend to read them both. You always give such nice detailed comments, not like the reviewers, or sometimes even the writer of the blurb on the cover who have visibly not got much farther than Chapter six or so. I do so hope that all your family are well, and the children flourishing. I have a namesake, Cornelia Brown, child of a young cousin who lives in Milton, who calls the baby Nina. One doesn't often hand on both one's names, formal and informal. It is hard that Ellen lives so far away, it is only lately that I have begun to see what delight my own generation gets out of its grandchildren. You should see Elisha (her brother in law --ed) hovering over his grandson and namesake, absolutely beaming all over. Since Dr. Swaim retired I do not seem to have reason for coming to Boston, but I shall hope to get there and see all of you some way still. With best love to Betty and so many regards to you all, Nina (signed in her hand) A further, if brief biography may be found at http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Meigs__Cornelia.html . Here is a partial list of titles written by, or edited by, Ms. Meigs during her lifetime: