manosca50 Adelaide Crapsey Papers, 1913-1977 Finding Aid Finding aid prepared by Gayla B. Spaulding. Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Smith College Archives
Northampton, MA
© 2003

Smith College. All rights reserved.

 Finding aid encoded using Perl scripts and edited in XMetal 2.0. Encoded by Brook Hopkins. 2003-06-03 Finding aid written in English. 2005-09-23 manosca50 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02-5c.xsl (sy2003-10-15). Smith College Archives Adelaide Crapsey Papers, 1913-1977 Finding Aid RG 42 Gayla B. Spaulding 2001 Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

© 2003 Smith College. All rights reserved.

 Collection Overview Crapsey, Adelaide, 1878-1914. Adelaide Crapsey Papers1913-1977 RG 42 1 box (.5 linear in.) Smith College Archives
Northampton, MA
Instructor of English, poet. Contains biographical material, correspondence, and publications. English. Biographical Note

Adelaide Crapsey was born on September 9, 1878 to Algernon Sidney and Adelaide Trowbridge Crapsey in Rochester, NY. She attended the Kemper Hall preparatory school in Kenosha, WI and graduated first in her class in 1897. Upon graduating, she entered Vassar College and matriculated with the class of 1901.

In 1903, Crapsey returned to Kemper Hall as a teacher of history and literature. In 1905 she studied at the School of Archeology in Rome, and following her return to the United States the next year, she became an instructor of history and literature in Miss Lowe's Preparatory School in Stamford, CT. However, her health was suffering from the effects of tuberculosis, and she was forced to stop teaching in 1908. She spent much of this time in Italy and England, working on her book, Analysis of English Metrics, which she considered her serious life work. Crapsey was also a talented poet, and invented her own metrical form, the cinquain. In 1911, Crapsey accepted a position as Instructor of Poetics at Smith College. In 1913 she became gravely ill and had to abandon her literary and academic work. She retreated to Saranac Lake in New York, where she died on October 8, 1914. She was 36 years old.

A book of poetry, Verse, was published posthumously by her parents in 1915 as well as the unfinished work A Study in English Metrics, in 1918.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Adelaide Crapsey Papers contain biographical materials, correspondence and publications spanning the career of Crapsey as a member of the English Department as Smith College.

Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into three series:

I. Biographical Materials II. Correspondence III. Publications Information on Use Terms of Access and Use

The collection is open to research according to the regulations of the Smith College Archives.

Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material from the documents must be requested from the Smith College Archives. Smith College owns copyright to any published material relating to college events and activities. Provenance and copyright ownership of other materials is unknown and researchers are responsible for determining any question of copyright.

 Preferred Citation

Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:

Adelaide Crapsey Papers, Box #, Smith College Archives.

 History of the Collection

Processed by Gayla B. Spaulding.

 Search Terms Crapsey, Adelaide, 1878-1914. Smith College--Faculty. Series I: Biographical Materials

This section contains information of Crapsey's career, book reviews from the Irondequoit Press, Henrietta Post and the Brighton-Pittsford Post, all in written in 1977. There are additional articles from the Smith Monthly (1915) and the Smith Weekly (1914).

 731 1 Biographical Materials 1914-1977 Series II: Correspondence

This folder contains typed copies of correspondence to and from Esther Leventhal from 1913-14. The original letters are housed in the University of Rochester Library.

 731 2 Correspondence 1913-14 Series III: Publications

This folder contains the following publications by Adelaide Crapsey: Verse, 1915; Verse, reprint, 1938; and A Study in English Metrics, 1918.

 731 3 Publications 1915, 1918 and 1938