From the Modernist Annex: American Women Writers in Museums and Libraries

Introduction

Acknowledgments This is a project about women writers in museums and libraries that was built very much out of the discoveries those archives make possible. I am very grateful for a grant from the Lilly Library at Indiana University, which allowed me to work with the library’s Edith Wharton papers. Two grants from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the essential guidance of Patricia Willis and Nancy Kuhl were crucial in developing the Wharton, Larsen, and Moore chapters. I want to thank Evelyn Feldman, Michael Barsanti, and Elizabeth E. Fuller at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, and Marianne C. Moore, literary executor for the estate of Marianne C. Moore, for their kindness in answering my questions and their enthusiasm for Moore’s work. For the 1972 photograph of Moore’s Greenwich Village apartment, a special thanks goes to Nancy Crampton. More than a year spent reading Ruth Benedict’s papers at the Vassar College Libraries Archives and Special Collections was made much easier by Dean Rogers’s professionalism. This book has gathered a great many debts along the way. My thinking emerged first with the encouragement of Langdon Hammer and Ruth Yeazell, for whose thoughtful guidance, intellectual rigor, and patience with the various stages of the writing process I am very grateful. I also want to thank other readers and friends in the Yale English Department from whom I have learned so much:Wai Chee Dimock,Jill Campbell,Robert Stepto,Alan Trachtenberg,Linda Peterson,William Deresiewicz,Lena Hill,Vanessa Ryan, Becca Boggs, and Gabriel Alkon. During the last three years my wonderful colleagues at West Point have provided new friendships and ideas. I would like particularly to thank Elizabeth Samet, James R. Kerin Jr., Tony Zupancic , Scott Krawczyk, Michael Stoneham, and Peter Molin. The staff at The University of Alabama Press has been wonderfully sup- portive as I actively revised this book over several drafts. Both of my readers provided useful feedback, but“Anonymous Reader B”went above and beyond , reading the entire manuscript carefully twice and providing some of the most helpful and detailed criticism that I have ever received. I am enormously indebted to her for the hard work, for it really helped me to see how I could best incorporate my new thinking and research into crafting a stronger book. My parents, Dorothy and Eric Roffman, have always been fond of books, and I am grateful for their general belief that it is worth the time and effort to bring one into being. To that end they have provided me with an immense amount of help—from encouraging words to many hours of babysitting— and, though it is small compensation, I would like to thank them for all of it. Many thanks go also to Kim, Franz,Audrey, and Margot Field; Ian, Jennie, Sam, Eli, and Zachary Roffman; Bob and Roz Rosenblatt; and Sharon Roffman , Elizabeth Basset, Dan Libenson, and Irwin Chen. Jennie Roffman and Beth Niestat carefully read and edited multiple drafts of this project, performing a time-consuming and thankless task so graciously.I am enormously grateful to Fu-Ming and Katherine Chen for being so supportive and such wonderful grandparents. Melvin has contributed a tremendous amount to this book, not only by being a generous reader and honest critic but also by providing wit, perspective, and a fabulous sound track. Milo is the newest member of our family and already a delighted reader. My apologies to him that neither trains nor helicopters nor even a single power shovel appear in the following pages. For granting permission to quote from unpublished material in their archives , I thank the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University ; 135th Street Branch Collection in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Records of the New York Public Library; Vassar College Libraries Archives and Special Collections; the Rosenbach Museum and Library , Philadelphia; Marianne C. Moore, literary executor for the estate of Marianne C.Moore; the National Gallery Archive,London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives; the Lilly Library,Indiana University,Bloomington; and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared in Edith Wharton and Material Culture, ed. Gary Totten (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007); an earlier version of chapter 3 appeared in Modern Fiction Studies 53, no. 4 (Dec. 2007): 752–87; parts of chapters 3 and 4 appeared in Institutions of Reading: The...