Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Hopkins, Mary Alden, 1876-1960
- Extent:
- 1.04 Linear feet (3 boxes)
- Language:
- English .
Background
- Scope and content:
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This collection consists of original correspondence and other secondary source material on Hannah More, gathered by Mary Alden Hopkins in the course of her research for the book Hannah More and Her Circle (1947). Materials include original outgoing letters from and incoming letters to Hannah More, typescripts of letters in this collection, copies and transcripts of More letters and materials held by other institutions, correspondence between Hopkins and various scholars and librarians, and three early works by More from Hopkins' collection (the majority of Hopkins' Hannah More book collection has been at Barnard College since 1975).
- Biographical / historical:
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Mary Alden Hopkins was born in Bangor, Maine on January 13, 1876 to Mary Allen Webster and George H. Hopkins. She attended the University of Maine and Wellesley College; she later received an M.A. from Columbia University. After finishing at Columbia, Hopkins continued to live in New York and was a vocal member of various progressive activist groups, regularly writing on topics such as female suffrage, labor and dress reform, birth control, pacifism and vegetarianism. Her magazine work was published in a variety of periodicals, from the socialist journal The Masses, to mainstream popular magazines like Scribner's, to major newspapers like The New York Times. During World War I, Hopkins was a member of the New York City branch of the Woman's Peace Party, and co-wrote antiwar articles for their magazine, Four Lights, which the US Postal Service refused to deliver after the US Department of Justice branded two of its issues as traitorous because of their vehement antiwar stance.
Hopkins also wrote several books with Doris Webster, including Consider the Consequences! (1930), which is now considered to be the first "choose-your-own-adventure" style gamebook.
Later in her life, Hopkins wrote Hannah More and Her Circle (1947) and Dr. Johnson's Lichfield (1952). She moved to Newtown, Connecticut where she restored five 18th century inns and their gardens. She died November 6, 1960 in Danbury, Connecticut.
After Hopkins' death, her agent Mary Squire Abbot donated her collection of Hannah More and Maria Edgeworth books and manuscripts to Bank Street College of Education. Other books from Hopkins' library were also donated by Abbot to the University of Maine. Much of the rare books from Hopkins' More and Edgeworth collections were transferred to Barnard College in 1974, but the archives relating to her research on More remained at Bank Street's Library until 2020, when they were donated to the Clark Library.
References:
- "Mary A. Hopkins, 84, Wrote of England," New York Times, November 10, 1960.
- Maine Alumnus, Volume 43, Number 4, February-March, 1962, page 11, (https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1253&context=alumni_magazines)
- Wikipedia
- Ancestry.com
- Acquisition information:
- Gift, Bank Street College of Education, 2020. Originally the gift of Mary Squire Abbot, before 1975.
- Processing information:
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This collection was processed and described at Bank Street Library in 2007 by Lindsey Wyckoff and Kate Kearns. Additional physical processing at the Clark Library by Joyce Wang in 2020; finding aid prepared in 2024 by Elizabeth Cervantes and Rebecca Fenning Marschall.
- Physical location:
- This collection is stored offsite at the SRLF. Please contact Clark Library staff at least 2 weeks in advance to consult this collection.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
This collection is open to researchers.
- Terms of access:
-
The Clark Library owns the property rights to its collections but does not hold the copyright to these materials and therefore cannot grant or deny permission to use them. Researchers are responsible for determining the copyright status of any materials they may wish to use, investigating the owner of the copyright, and obtaining permission for their intended publication or other use. In all cases, you must cite the Clark Library as the source with the following credit line: The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
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2520 Cimarron StreetLos Angeles, CA 90018, US
- Contact:
- (310) 794-5155