[Vwoolf] Fw: [archives] Without the great secretary-wives, who will guard great writers' archives?

[kllevenback at att.net]

Thought you might find this posting from the archival listserv of interest as 
well.

 There was an obituary in the NY Times as well, but it did not arouse as much 
comment in archival circles.

Karen Levenback

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Michele R Combs <mrrothen at syr.edu>
To: Archives & Archivists (A&A) List <archives at forums.archivists.org>
Sent: Thu, November 15, 2012 3:50:42 PM
Subject: [archives] Without the great secretary-wives, who will guard great 
writers' archives?

An interesting (if somewhat shallow and sexist!) piece from the Guardian, on 
great writers' secretaries, who became wives and then watchdogs of literary 
legacies.  Some of the comments that follow the piece are worth reading as well.

"Valerie Eliot, who died last week, was the last of a generation of typists who 
married their employers and curated their work.  Before her death last week at 
the age of 86, Valerie Eliot had spent the previous half-century forbidding 
impertinent journalists and scholars from accessing her late husband TS Eliot's 
private papers...Valerie Eliot was able to be so definite about what the author 
of the Waste Land would have wanted not so much because she had been his wife - 
their late marriage lasted only eight years before Eliot's death in 1965 - but 
because she had been his secretary... To have real literary clout, the secretary 
needed to marry her Great Man..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/13/literary-secretary-wives-writers-archives 
 

Michele
+++++++++++++++
Michele Combs
Lead Archivist
Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University
315-443-2081
mrrothen at syr.edu  
scrc.syr.edu 
library-blog.syr.edu/scrc



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