Buckingham (Elizabeth Lee) Papers, 1900-1970

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Summary

Title:
Elizabeth Lee Buckingham papers
Dates:
1900-1970
Creators:
Buckingham, Elizabeth Lee, 1885-
Extent:
6.5 Linear feet
Language:
The materials are in English .
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Elizabeth Lee Buckingham Papers, SC 167, Stanford University Archives, Stanford, Calif.

Background

Scope and content:

The General Files section contains material on various subjects of interest to Miss Buckingham, a small amount of Stanford-related correspondence, and ten folders of personal correspondence. Any professional correspondence is filed under the appropriate subject heading (Radio, Speech, etc.). The Student Notes are Miss Buckingham's own from her student days, ranging from high school to post-graduate work at Columbia University. The Courses section includes her students' papers and examinations, class notebooks, and some of her own course notes. The folder in the Photographs section includes miscellaneous photographs and negatives, most of them unidentified. One photo of interest is a snapshot of Miss Buckingham with Frances Theresa Russell and Mary Yost, n.d.

The materials in this collection arrived in complete disarray. Letters, course papers, photographs, manuscripts and notebooks were dumped together with recipes, Christmas cards, and scraps of paper with notes and jottings. After the sorting process was well underway it became apparent that some of the papers were the property of Frances Theresa Russell, Stanford Professor of English, and her husband Frank Russell, a noted Harvard anthropologist who died in 1903. Mrs. Russell and Miss Buckingham were housemates for many years until Mrs. Russell's death in 1936, and apparently Mrs. Russell's papers had never been sorted or claimed. Every attempt has been made to identify and separate the material. The Russell papers have been put in SC 166. However, a researcher should be aware of the difficulty and bring any questionable items to the attention of the Archivist.

There is no evidence that Miss Buckingham carried on professional correspondence with anyone over a long period of time. However, her personal correspondence includes descriptive letters from a number of her students who were struggling to become professionally established. There are also several hand-tinted Christmas cards, some with notes, from Mrs. Bruce Bliven, 1936-40. It is helpful to know when examining the correspondence that Miss Buckingham's nickname was Peter. Mrs. Russell was often referred to as "Terri". Mary Yost, Dean of Women and Lecturer in English, signed her letters "Wendy". Letters signed by "Edith" are from Edith Mirrielees, Professor of English.

Biographical / historical:

Elizabeth Lee Buckingham was born on November 9, 1885. Her personal history is sketchy due to a lack of concrete information, but she listed Palo Alto as her home town in the 1904-05 Stanford Register. She received her A.B. in 1910 and her A.M. in 1914 from Stanford, both in English. During 1908-09 she was an Assistant in English at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, and during 1910-11 an Assistant in English at Stanford, after which she was on the Stanford faculty continuously until her retirement as Associate Professor of Speech and Drama, Emeritus, in 1944. During many of her years at Stanford she shared a house at 534 Lasuen with several Stanford faculty women, among them Frances Theresa Russell, Mary Yost, and Edith Mirrielees.

Arrangement:

These papers are arranged into four major groups: General Files, 1904-70; Student Notes, 1900-18; Courses, 1911-44, and Photographs, n.d. While the papers range from 1900-1970, the bulk of the collection falls within the period 1930-43.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Processed by Marianne Bahmann; machine-readable finding aid created by Patricia White
Date Prepared:
1997
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit

Access and use

Restrictions:

None.

Terms of access:

Property rights reside with the repository. Literary rights reside with the creators of the documents or their heirs. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Public Services Librarian of the Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Elizabeth Lee Buckingham Papers, SC 167, Stanford University Archives, Stanford, Calif.

Location of this collection:
Stanford University Archives, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6064, US
Contact:
(650) 725-1022
specialcollections@stanford.edu
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