Rauner Special Collections Finding Aids

Biographical Information

Introduction

The Papers of Eleanor H. Porter were purchased by the Dartmouth College Library from Charles Apfelbaum Rare Books and Collections, Valley Stream, New York, in August 1995. The acquisition of this small group of materials is in keeping with the collections policy of the Library's Special Collections, which focusses on New England's women writers.

Eleanor Hodgman was born December 19, 1868, in Littleton, New Hampshire. She was educated in local schools, and by private tutors, subsequently attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She established a career singing in private homes, at public functions, and in church choirs. Eleanor Hodgman married John Lyman Porter, a Vermont businessman, in 1892; after several years spent in Chattanooga, Tennessee, New York City and Springfield, Vermont, they established a permanent residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

By 1901, Porter had given up her musical career in favor of writing short stories for magazines. Her first novel, Cross Currents, was published in 1907, and its sequel, Turn of the Tide, in 1908. Other novels followed, until in 1913, she published Pollyanna, which became an immediate best seller, and the book for which she is chiefly remembered. Her other best seller, Just David, was published in 1916. The publisher, Houghton Mifflin Co. of Boston, offered a prize for the best letter explaining how the book inspired its readers; there was a tremendous response. Porter continued to write, and publish, at least one book a year until her death in 1920.

The Eleanor H. Porter collection occupies 3 boxes, or approximately 3.0 linear feet of shelf space. The materials are almost exclusively letters, with a few photographs and ephemera included. The bulk of the letters were written to Eleanor by John Lyman Porter, most of them before their marriage, and by Eleanor to John, after their marriage. There is also a large group of letters between Eleanor and various book and magazine editors, discussing her work, rejecting and accepting stories, sometimes for as little as a complimentary subscription to the magazine in question. The Just David prize competition drew over 400 responses from all over the country; only one of the readers who responded disliked the book!

No restrictions have been placed on any of the materials in the collection; where original letters are too fragile to handle they have been supplemented with photocopies. Further information concerning Eleanor H. Porter may be found in Special Collections in Webster Hall.

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