Title:

Helene Maxwell Brewer papers, approximately 1900-2006

Creator/Contributor:

Brewer, Helene Maxwell, 1907-2006, creator

Creator/Contributor:

Heney, Francis J. (Francis Joseph), 1859-1937, creator.

Creator/Contributor:

Pinchot, Amos, 1873-1944, creator.

The Helene Maxwell Brewer papers consist of professional and personal materials. The professional materials relate to Brewer's work on an intended biography of Francis J. Heney and a 1958 edition of Amos Pinchot's Amos Pinchot's The History of the Progressive Party, 1912-1916. The collection also includes some original correspondence to and from Heney and Pinchot (which was in Brewer's possession). There are several folders, for example, of contemporaneous correspondence concerning Heney's unsuccessful 1918 campaign to be the governor of California. There are also scrapbooks of clippings from the 1930s documenting Amos Pinchot. The collection also includes professional and personal correspondence and personal photographs. Among Brewer's professional correspondents is historian William Q. Maxwell. Personal correspondents include Emma McLaughlin and Sara Caldwell. Well documented in the collection's photographs is Brewer's time during the late 1960s teaching at Tsuda University (a women's college) in Japan. There are many photographs of Brewer and her Japanese colleagues, including professor and feminist scholar Fumi Takano.

Date:

1900 (issued)

Subject:

Women historians

Historiennes

historians

Politics and government

Women historians

United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909

United States -- Politics and government -- 1909-1913

United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921

États-Unis -- Politique et gouvernement -- 1901-1909

États-Unis -- Politique et gouvernement -- 1909-1913

États-Unis -- Politique et gouvernement -- 1913-1921

United States

Tsudajuku Senmon Gakkō.

Bancroft Library. -- Oral History Center.

Queens College (New York, N.Y.). -- Department of English.

Tsudajuku Senmon Gakkō

National Progressive Convention (1st : 1912 : Chicago) -- Pictorial works

National Progressive Convention

Brewer, Helene Maxwell -- 1907-2006 -- Archives

Heney, Francis J. (Francis Joseph) -- 1859-1937

Pinchot, Amos -- 1873-1944

Takano, Fumi -- 1914-2013

Pinchot, Amos -- 1873-1944

COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE: Advance notice required for use.

Gift; of Sarah Caldwell; in 2007.

Additions: gift of Sara Wood Smith; 2021.

Helene Maxwell Brewer (1907-2006) was born in San Francisco County to William Maxwell and Hulda (Anderson) Maxwell and raised in San Mateo, California. In 1924, Helene graduated from San Mateo High School. Helene and her family then moved to Santa Barbara, where her father was a professor at the Santa Barbara State Teachers College. Helene received an A.B. in 1930 from the Santa Barbara State Teachers College, an M.A. in English in 1934 from Stanford University, and a PhD in English in 1940 from Johns Hopkins University. In 1940, she also married Edward Niles Hooker, who had served on the English faculty at Johns Hopkins before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1938. The couple was married in Las Vegas. Helene received a Guggenheim Fellowship (under the name of Helene Maxwell Hooker) in 1949. By 1951, her marriage had ended and E.N. Hooker was married to UCLA psychology professor Evelyn Gentry. During theIn 1952, Helene took a position teaching American Literature at Queens College, City University of New York. By the late 1950s, Helene's primary research interest was American politics in the Progressive Era and, in 1958, Helene published (under the name Helene Maxwell Hooker) a critical edition of Amos Pinchot's History of the Progressive Party, which Pinchot never saw published in his lifetime. Also in 1958, Helene married Joseph Hillyer Brewer (1898-1999) on June 12 in New York City. Brewer had been president of Olivet College (1934-1943) and was by the late 1950s, associate director of the Queens College library. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Helene was spending her summers at the University of California, Berkeley. She lived at the Women's Faculty Club and researched progressive politics at The Bancroft Library. During this time, Helene also started working for the Regional Oral History Office at UC Berkeley (which at the time was being led by Willa K. Baum). Helene served as primary interviewer for a range of oral histories (mostly of women leaders) and wrote detailed introductions for others. In 1967, Helene went abroad on a Fullbright to teach at Tsuda University, a women's college in Japan. There she befriended Fumi Takano, feminist, creator of the American Studies program at Tsuda University, and first Japanese President of the International Federation of University Women (from 1980 to 1983). Helene Maxwell Brewer lived during her later years with her friend Sara Caldwell. Many of the papers in this collection were in the possession of Caldwell and her family until they were donated to The Bancroft Library.

Preferred citation: Helene Maxwell Brewer papers, BANC MSS 2007/201, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

In English.

Type:

Archives

Pictorial works

print

6 (3 1 4 1

English

BANC MSS 2007/201local

Origin:

California

COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE: Advance notice required for use.