Sunday, October 29, 2017

Reformation Day.... and a post




 Image result for cornelia meigs, books

This is not on the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation but on a children's author: 
Cornelia Meigs. I am compiling a list for an Evening Chat at Grace to Build 
Retreat next week titled: Buried Treasures.

I found this letter on wikipedia: 

For a glimpse into her life, here are excerpts from a 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 so 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 ...
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 years 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 getting it finished and out of my hands. The 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 ...
Nina (signed in her hand)

2 comments:

podso said...

I do love reading letters. I wonder where the Byrn Mawr is--PA? If so my dad lived near it and walked there often. That's where Bryn Athyn Cathedral is, which is in a sense, part of our family history.

Bonnie said...

Yes, PA. What a wonderful connection. Your grands would love her books.