Editor's Note

In Memoriam: Emily Mitchell Wallace Gregory (1933-2019)

Featured in this issue of the William Carlos Williams Review are reprints of two articles by Emily Mitchell Wallace that act as a tribute to her and in recognition of her importance to Williams scholarship. Emily helped establish the precursor to this publication by working with the first editor Theodora Rapp Graham to produce the William Carlos Williams Newsletter that first appeared in 1975. It is also very fitting that this issue includes an article by Paul Cappucci very much in the spirit of archival research that Emily's best work embodied and also ends with a bibliography given Emily's vital early groundwork for Williams scholarship in producing A Bibliography of William Carlos Williams in 1968.

Emily died on 29 September 2019, a fact that was a great shock given that she had been present at and inimitably central to the William Carlos Williams Society Biennial Conference held in Rome from 19 to 21 June 2019. That gathering was staged at The Center for American Studies, and hosted by Emily's good friend, Professor Giorcelli, who contributes a note of remembrance of her in this issue.

On a personal note it was a bittersweet experience re-reading the articles reprinted here. Revisiting this work reminded me of the importance of Emily's scholarship in alleviating my own struggles as a PhD student writing on Williams, as my wish to delve into the influence of Unitarianism on Williams led me directly to these essays. She was one among so few to even make mention of its presence let alone hint at its relevance. I was thus reminded of the encouragement I took from her striking demonstration of the effectiveness of historical contextualization in opening up Williams's early life and the relief I felt that I was not again confronting a summary dismissal of notions that religion might have played some role in the life, work and outlook of such an avowedly secular modernist poet.

The more sobering side to revisiting these pieces was a feeling of regret that I was not able to enjoy more and so delve deeper into the mind that one sees at work in these examples of her writing. Emily was not an easy person, and I struggled with aspects of her personality that I did not understand. But reading her again was a deep and sincere pleasure and I hope that you are also able to share that through the words, thoughts and scholarship reprinted here in her memory.