Heloise Edwina Hersey (1855–1933) was an American scholar of Anglo-Saxon language and literature. A graduate of Vassar College[1] and the first female professor of Anglo-Saxon studies in the United States,[2] she was appointed at Smith College in 1878.
Biography
editThe daughter of a doctor from Oxford, Maine,[3] Hersey received her BA from Vassar College in 1876, and from 1877 to 1899, she ran her own school, Miss Hersey's School for Girls, in Boston. In 1878 she was appointed at Smith College, where she worked until 1883[4] teaching rhetoric and Anglo-Saxon,[5] sharing teaching duties with Laurenus Clark Seelye, the college's president.[6] She was awarded honorary degrees by Bowdoin College (1921) and Tufts University (1922).[4]
In 1901 she published a collection of letters called To Girls.[4]
Vassar College has a scholarship in her name, the Heloise E. Hersey Fund,[7] "to be expended for the purchase of books, preferably those of recent issue that have real literary value".[8] Her uncle started the scholarship.[9]
References
edit- ^ Thwing, Charles F. (1895). "What Becomes of College Women". North American Review. 161 (468): 546–53. JSTOR 25103613.
- ^ Dockray-Miller, Mary (16–17 October 2015). A Desire for Feminine Origins: Anglo-Saxon in the 19th Century American Women's Colleges (Speech). Opera Omnia: A Festspiel in Honor of Allen J. Frantzen. Loyola University Chicago.
- ^ Smith, Amanda (2011). Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson. New York: Knopf. pp. 62–65. ISBN 9780375411007.
- ^ a b c Kersey, Shirley Nelson (1981). Classics in the education of girls and women. Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow. p. 314ff. ISBN 9780810813540.
- ^ Northampton and Easthampton Directory. Price and Lee. 1883. p. 159.
- ^ "English". Smithipedia.
- ^ "Scholarship Funds". Vassar College. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
- ^ "List of Trust Funds as of December 31, 1943". Boston Public Library Report. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
- ^ "Personals". The Vassar Miscellany. 22: 390. 1892. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
External links
edit- Bibliography of online books at UPenn