$650.00

SKU: AM00358 Categories: ,

Description

Description: This archive of 31 letters from local and international writers, artists, and socialites of the late 19th c.  includes: social invitations, letters of appreciation, as well as, formal letters of acceptance or inability to speak at the Wednesday Afternoon Club of New York.

Kate Hillard’s wide circle of literary friends, as well as, personal relationships are well represented in these letters. The Irish novelist Anna Maria Hall arranges to receive Hillard in her home. Vocalist Antoinette Sterling sees herself as “a working woman with no time for societies.” Painter and art critic Eugene Benson invites her to visit his studio Casa Story in Rome. Author and art critic, John Elderkins arranges her lecture about poet Heinrich Heine for the Goethe Club at Sticks Hall. Collector of Americana, W. H. Huntington offers “ship-board reading” material from a “talk touching on Balzac.”  Farmer and poet, C. H. Crandall asks her permission to copyright “The Best Gift” which he has included in his sonnet anthology, Representative Sonnets by American Poets. Lucia G. Runkle, “long known as one of the most brilliant literary critic of the state,” compliments her: “You speak, as I hope you know, with much grace and fitness and always with charming refinement of voice and manner.” Novelist, poet, and first female correspondent, Anne Hampton Brewster after hearing her speak writes: “Very often when authors are agreeable as you are, their work do not equal them. I delighted to find perfect harmony between you and your writing.” Novelist, short story writer, and suffragist Sarah Barnwell Elliot accepts, “The Spirit of the Nineteenth Century in Fiction,” for publication. Katie Barry, a friend who has moved away from New York, writes “. . . when I received your second letter I opened my eyes because I seldom get such sweetness from my own sex. Thank you.” In a long letter Scottish pianist and composer, Helen Hopekrik, effusively thanks Hillard for recommending “Cape Papoise” [Porpoise] as a vacation spot. The archive includes more notes from other literary figures and a note from her mother about a ticket to the “Barnums wicket [?].”

Most letters and notes are written on ivory or blue paper, the largest dimension being approx. 6”x7”. Item #AM00358

Kate Hillard (1839-1918) was poet, translator, and literary critic. She also was the President of the Wednesday Afternoon Club. She published poetry in numerous prominent magazines, such as Lippincott’s MonthlyHarper’s, McBride’s and The Century. She was friends with many important and literary people of the time, among them Walt Whitman and S. Weir Pritchard.

The Wednesday Afternoon Club, founded in 1888, was an exclusive club in spite of its motto “Audi Alteram Partem” [hear the other side]. It was “devoted to discussion of literary, economic, educational and reformatory subjects.”

Condition: Mailing fold lines, generally, all letters are in very good condition.