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Annie Russell Marble (1864-1936) of Worcester, Massachusetts—author, teacher, lecturer, and civic leader—was also literary critic and book editor for the Worcester Telegram from 1920 to 1929. Among her publications are Women Who Came on the Mayflower (1920) and Isaiah Thomas: From ‘Prentice to Patron (1935).

This collection consists of notes and letters written from 1888 to 1929 by various literary figures to Mrs. Marble. The correspondence contains brief notes of greeting, permission to include published verses in forthcoming publications, regrets and acceptances of lecture invitations, and several brief autobiographical notes. Mrs. Marble compiled this collection mainly for its autograph value and for the insight it provided for “students of chirography, psychology, and personality.”

Edward Bangs (1756-1818) graduated from Harvard in 1777 and became an attorney in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was later appointed to the state supreme court. His son, Edward Dillingham Bangs (1790-1838) received his M.A. from Harvard in 1827 after having studied law with his father. He had actually begun his practice in Worcester in 1813. Bangs served as state representative, county attorney, and Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1824-1836. Edward D. Bangs married on 12 April 1824 Mary Grosvenor (1800-1864), who later married Stephen Salisbury (1798-1884).

This collection includes a diary probably kept by Mary Grosvenor Bangs for the period 1840 to 1842. Mary’s diary contains descriptions of visits to Boston, the city’s active social life, and descriptions of the inside of its Insane Asylum and House of Representatives. There is also a volume of notes for a will made by Mary G. Bangs, c. 1850.

The folder of documents and letters include, as principal correspondents, cousin Alice Bangs of Watertown, Massachusetts, Rev. John Healy Heywood of Louisville, Kentucky, and Stephen Salisbury II. Two folders of letters written to Mary G. Bangs from various cousins and friends for the period 1839 to 1864 contain primarily information about family members and acquaintances—including letters written by Helen James, the wife of the Rev. Horace James. Rev. Heywood frequently wrote of his ministry in Louisville and surrounding towns, while Salisbury courted Mary through his letters in 1856.

Dorothy Sturgis Harding (1891-1978), bookplate designer, was the daughter of Richard Clipston Sturgis (1860-1951), noted Boston architect and designer of many New England buildings, including the American Antiquarian Society. Mrs. Harding studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1910. She resided with her husband, Lester William Harding, in Winchester, New Hampshire, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she worked as a draftsman at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard from 1942 to 1957. She was a member of various art and bookplate societies.

The collection contains primarily the business correspondence of Dorothy Sturgis Harding for the period 1921 to 1976. Many letters include rough notes or copies of Mrs. Harding’s responses. The letters written by clients concern the ordering, cost, and details of the design of bookplates; those written by colleagues and collectors refer to exhibits of Mrs. Harding’s bookplate prints and other subjects of mutual interest. Those correspondents included Rockwell Kent, 1940-1960; Dan Burne Jones, 1938-1976; Oliver Clement Sheean, 1940-1947; and Elisha Brown Bird, 1832-1940. The latter occasionally commented on the political and economic policies of the Roosevelt administrations.

There are also letters from institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts in New York, whose directors employed Mrs. Harding to illustrate bulletins and design bookplates. Several correspondents, such as Carlyle Solomon Baer and Audrey Spencer Arellanes, represented bookplate societies. Baer’s extensive correspondence, 1932-1969, concerns primarily the publication of the Yearbook of the American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers, as well as his commentaries on contemporary designers and engravers. Audrey Spencer Arellanes assumed the work upon Baer’s death in 1969. There are also many letters from printing and publishing companies, e.g., John Peterson and Son of Boston, Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company of Boston, and the Bond Wheelwright Company of Freeport, Me., with whom Mrs. Harding contracted to print her bookplate designs. Mrs. Harding illustrated several books for the latter company from 1959-1961. Also represented throughout the correspondence are details of the frequent exhibitions of her prints by the Junior League of America and the Print Club of Philadelphia.

Among the more than one hundred people for whom she designed bookplates and Christmas cards, and, in several cases, with whom she established a friendly correspondence, were Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell and his wife Lady Ann Elizabeth Caldwell Grenfell, 1927-1937; Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933-1959; and William Norton Bullard and his wife Mary Reynolds Bullard, 1927-1945. Mrs. Harding also corresponded with Norman Rockwell, 1960-1971.

The collections also contains photocopies of letters, 1908-1909, written by Samuel Langhorne Clemens to Mrs. Harding when she was a young girl and one of the author’s “angel-fish” (i.e., group of children with whom he established a warm friendship). Mrs. Harding had attempted to have the letter published by the Atlantic Monthly, accompanied by a memoir of her friendship with Clemens. This material and correspondence with the Atlantic Monthly are included in the collection. In addition, there is correspondence, 1973, with Frederick Anderson, editor of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley, and Abigail White Howells, concerning Mrs. Hardings’ memoirs of Clemens.

Among the miscellaneous papers is correspondence with Arthur Graham Carey, editor of the Catholic Art Quarterly, concerning Mrs. Harding’s assistance with publications; newsclippings, poetry, and a checklist of her bookplates.