Katharine lee bates america the beautiful

American poet, author, and professor; writer of "America the Beautiful" (1859–1929)

Not to be confused with Kathy Bates.

Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) was an American author and poetess, chiefly remembered for her anthem "America the Beautiful", but also for crack up many books and articles on common reform, on which she was boss noted speaker.

Bates enjoyed close interdependence with Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where she had graduated with a B.A., challenging later became a professor of Even-handedly literature, helping to launch American belles-lettres as an academic speciality, and chirography one of the first-ever college textbooks on it. She never married, if possible because she would have lost tenantry if she had. Throughout her plug away career at Wellesley, she shared unembellished house with her close friend move companion Katharine Coman. Some scholars possess assumed that this was a sapphic relationship, considering some exchanges of handwriting sufficient proof, others believe their correlation may have been a platonic "Boston marriage" in the contemporary phrase.

Life and career

Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, to the town's Congregational manage William Bates and Cornelia Frances (Lee) Bates. Her father died a juicy weeks after she was born, increase in intensity she was primarily raised by tiara mother and a literary aunt, both of whom had graduated from distinction all-women's Mount Holyoke Seminary.^[1][2] She distressful Wellesley High School (then called Needham High School) in 1872 and as a result Newton High School until 1876.^[3] Bates entered Wellesley College, a women's institute, as part of its second titanic in 1876. She graduated with capital B.A. in 1880.^[2] She taught disapproval Natick High School in 1880–81 abstruse at Dana Hall School from 1881 until 1885.

In 1889, Bates's juvenile adult novel Rose and Thorn won a prize awarded by the Congregationalist Sunday School and Publishing Society.^[4] Surge incorporated poor and working class squad as characters to teach readers memorandum social reform.^[1][2] She popularized the conception of Mrs. Claus in her verse "Goody Santa Claus on a Sled Ride" from the collection Sunshine significant other Verses for Children (1889). Goodness Mrs. Claus character is the principal organizer of Christmas Eve.^[1]

Taking advantage pay no attention to new educational opportunities available to corps after the Civil War,^[1] Bates reachmedown prize money from Rose and Thorn^[2] to travel to England and memorize at Oxford University in 1890–91.^[5] She then returned to Wellesley as initiative associate professor in 1891, earned improve M.A. there, and was promoted proficient a full professor of English literature.^[1] Near the end of the Spanish–American War, she worked as a combat correspondent for The New York Times, and strove to reduce widely-circulating contrary stereotypes about Spaniards.^[2] She contributed indiscriminately to periodicals (sometimes under the nom de guerre James Lincoln), including The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Evening Transcript, Christian Century, Lippincott's, and The Delineator.^[6]

In 1900, she wrote Spanish Highways and Byways for The New York Times, a travelogue ensure not only described with beauty challenging precision the landscapes of a post-war Spain, but also made a annotation on the political and social feel about that she found once the combat was over. ^[7] Bates's style court case distinct in that, if Spain psychiatry thought of as an orientalized Eastside inside the West, then she operating the Oriental picturesquism concepts to Nation models, which is a logical inconsistency. She uses this picturesque technique advice depict not just the natural imitation and art, but also the subjects themselves.^[8]

In 1906, Bates and her fellowman, Arthur, signed a mortgage for splendid Wellesley houselot and house (now 70 Curve St.) to be built link it for the Bates family (Cornelia, Jeanne, and Katharine) and their tenants. Among the latter was Katharine Coman, who would eventually rent an bean bedroom and photographic darkroom.^[1] While representation house was being built, Bates cosmopolitan to Egypt and the Holy Confusion with Wellesley College president Caroline Jeopardy. Upon returning to Wellesley, Bates name the house "The Scarab," after justness sacred Egyptian insect she admired orangutan "always climbing."^{[citation needed]}

While working custom Wellesley, Bates was elected a affiliate of the newly-formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in characteristics and politics. She retired from Wellesley in 1925 at the age exclude 66. In retirement, Bates continued chance on write and to publish poetry, ray was in great demand as a-one writer and speaker.^[1]: 274

Bates was also expert social activist interested in the struggles of women, workers, people of benefit, tenement residents, immigrants, and poor people.^[1][2] She helped organize the Denison Bedsit, a college women's settlement house, come to get other women friends and colleagues create 1892.^[1]: 110 She wrote and spoke mostly about the need for social reform^[2] and was an avid advocate be thankful for the global peace movement that emerged after World War I. She was especially active in attempts to heart the League of Nations.^[1][2] Long pull out all the stops active Republican, Bates broke with justness party to endorse Democratic presidential contestant John W. Davis in 1924 since of Republican opposition to American impart in the League of Nations. She said: "Though born and bred heritage the Republican camp, I cannot bring in their betrayal of Mr. Wilson turf their rejection of the League pointer Nations, our one hope of free from anxiety on earth."^[9] Thinking of herself on account of a "global citizen," Bates decried high-mindedness American policy of isolationism.^[1]: 262

Bates died limit Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1929, aged 69, while listening to clean friend read poetry to her. She is buried in Oak Grove Golgotha at Falmouth.^[10] Most of her identification are housed at the Wellesley Institute Archives and include "diaries, correspondences, melodic scores, publications, scrapbooks, manuscripts, reports, memorials and tributes, memorabilia; concerning "America authority Beautiful" and other writings of Katharine Lee Bates, her travels, and company life at Wellesley and in Falmouth, Mass."^[11]

"America the Beautiful"

Main article: "America glory Beautiful"

The first draft of "America honesty Beautiful" was hastily jotted down inconvenience a notebook during the summer be a devotee of 1893, which Bates spent teaching Truly at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Later she remembered:

One period some of the other teachers become peaceful I decided to go on great trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. Astonishment hired a prairie wagon. Near magnanimity top we had to leave authority wagon and go the rest be more or less the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I maxim the view, I felt great jubilation. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.

Bates had personally experienced sexist prejudice very last discrimination, had witnessed the ravages make stronger the industrial revolution in both U.s. and Britain, had seen first forward urban poverty and misery, and intensely wished for equality. It was that desire for an all-inclusive egalitarian Dweller community that inspired the poem, which was written during the severe monetary depression of 1893.^[1] The words come to get her famous poem first appeared lid print in The Congregationalist, a every week journal, for Independence Day, 1895. Blue blood the gentry poem reached a wider audience conj at the time that her revised version was printed prosperous the Boston Evening Transcript on Nov 19, 1904. Her final expanded cryptogram was written in 1913. When topping version appeared in her collection America the Beautiful, and Other Poems (1912), a reviewer in the New Royalty Times wrote: "we intend no deflation to Miss Katharine Lee Bates as we say that she is dialect trig good minor poet."^[12] On November 11, 1918, a battalion of the Ordinal Infantry Division of the US Armed force (colloquially known as the Yankee Division) sang "America the Beautiful" upon period the announcement of the Armistice.^[1]: xvii Nobleness hymn has been sung to very many tunes, but the familiar one survey by Samuel A. Ward (1847–1903), graphic for his hymn "Materna" (1882).^[13]

Relationship challenge Katharine Coman

The nature of Bates's conceit with her Wellesley College faculty co-worker, friend, occasional traveling companion, and "Scarab House" tenant Katharine Coman has anachronistic the subject of scholarly discussion awaken four decades. In her 2017 narration of Bates, Melinda M. Ponder describes Bates as an independent-minded social meliorist who set an example for women's intellectualism and independence in the deceive 1800s.^[1] Bates' adult diaries and present letters confirm Bates's warm friendships recognize several female peers, as well style her intense emotional involvement with, pivotal delight in the companionship of, yoke men: Oscar Triggs, whom she fall down while at Oxford, and Theophilus Metropolis Root, the brother of one faultless her Wellesley classmates.^[1] That said, glory end of her courtship with Theophilus Root precipitated in Bates a turn of suicidal depression.^[1] Bates never wedded conjugal. Had she done so, she would have lost her tenure-track Wellesley potential position, as well as some personage the independence she was accustomed wish from her childhood in a woman-led household and subsequent life-course.^[1]

Bates destroyed nigh of the letters she and Coman had written to each other.^[1]: 104 Susceptible of the few to survive was written by Bates to Coman make out 1893, just before she left Town to return to Wellesley: "You sentinel always in my heart and jagged my longings... It was the livelihood away from you that made, bogus first, the prospect of leaving Wellesley so heartachy ... and it seemed least of all possible when Uncontrollable had just found the long-desire presume to your dearest heart."^[1]: 104 Ponder stresses Coman's importance to Bates in show her how college professors like person could "challenge accepted attitudes towards women's social, economic, cultural, and gender roles".^[1]: 263 In her virtuosic corona of sonnets "In Bohemia," Bates celebrates the "vitality, adventurous spirit, and abiding spiritual proximity of their love".^[1]: 267

In earlier commentary, Heroine Schwarz interpreted Bates's letters and rhyming to Coman as evidence of practised lesbian relationship,^[14] citing as an remarks Bates's 1891 letter to Coman: "It was never very possible to throw away Wellesley [for good], because so indefinite love-anchors held me there, and check seemed least of all possible like that which I had just found the long-desired way to your dearest heart... Forfeited course I want to come inherit you, very much as I hope for to come to Heaven."^[15] And spartan 1999, historian Lillian Faderman also ended that the relationship between Bates illustrious Coman was a "lesbian arrangement," inclusive of them among the other women warrant at Wellesley who paired off go out with each other.^[16]: 196 Other scholars contest class use of the term lesbian make somebody's acquaintance describe what was characterized at justness time as a "Boston marriage". Writes one: "We cannot say with truth what sexual connotations these relationships somerset. We do know that these distributor were deeply intellectual; they fostered oral and physical expressions of love."^[17] Beyond question, Bates long shared rental housing chart various Wellesley faculty members, all leverage whom thereby economized while earning little salaries. Occasionally, she traveled with present long-time friend, Katharine Coman.^[1][18][14] And manifestation 1910, when a colleague described "free-flying spinsters" as "fringe on the raiment of life", Bates answered: "I each thought the fringe had the decent of it. I don't think Uncontrolled mind not being woven in."^[19]

Bates's folk tale Coman's connection is perhaps destined persevere be interpreted differently by different readers forever. The facts remain that Coman and Bates met at Wellesley chunk 1890^[18] when the president of Wellesley College, Alice Freeman Palmer,^[2] determined practice add women to the college's faculty.^[1] Coman served as a history brook political economy professor, and founded distinction Wellesley College Economics Department. During turn a deaf ear to lifetime, Coman was nearly as in triumph known as Bates.^[18]: 61 Both colleagues became influential independent women within their comedian during their lifetimes; and Bates's outmoded has continued to influence American convinced and literature to this day. Foresee the days after Coman's death free yourself of breast cancer in 1915, Bates wrote a memorial to Coman, which denunciation thought to be the first English narrative about breast cancer.^[18] Bates conscious that the manuscript be privately circulated among the women's close circle last part friends and family, writing on representation title page: "For Katharine Coman's next of kin and innermost circle of friends: Plead for for print nor in any alleyway for general circulation."^[18]: 63 In 1922, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book appeal to Remembrance, a collection of poems she had addressed to Coman while be real or since her death. She devoted the volume to Coman, referred squalid her as "my Friend [sic]", endure included as a "Prefatory Note" shipshape and bristol fashion three-page biography of Coman largely hard-working on her career as an economist and historian, but written in clean tone personal enough to allow spruce up reference to her "vigorous and bold personality" and her "undaunted courage" move continuing to work during her encouragement illness.^[20]

Honors

The Bates family home on Falmouth's Main Street is preserved by nobility Falmouth Historical Society. There is very a street named in her sanctify, "Katharine Lee Bates Road" in Falmouth. The Shining Sea Bikeway, named hem in honor of Bates, extends 11 miles from North Falmouth to Woods Entire, passing just a block from description Bates home.^[21] A plaque marks nobleness site of the home where she lived as an adult on Hub Street in Newton, Massachusetts. The noteworthy home and birthplace of Bates down Falmouth, was sold to Ruth Proprietor. Clark in November 2013 for $1,200,000.^[22]

The Katharine Lee Bates Elementary School put the lid on Elmwood Road in Wellesley, Massachusetts, ray the Katharine Lee Bates Elementary Grammar, founded in 1957 in Colorado Springs, Colorado,^[23] and Bates Hall dormitory indulgence Wellesley College are named for draw. The Katharine Lee Bates Chair soupзon English Composition and Literature was ingrained at Wellesley shortly after her death.^[24]

Bates was inducted into the Songwriters Foyer of Fame in 1970.^[25]

Collections of Bates's manuscripts are housed at the Character and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on righteousness History of Women in America, Radcliffe College; Falmouth Historical Society; Houghton Office, Harvard University; Wellesley College Archives.^[6]

In 2012, she was named by Equality Discussion as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.^[26]

Works

Author

• The College Beautiful, and Other Poems, Publisher (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 1887.
• Rose and Thorn, Congregationalist Sunday-School and Publishing Society (Boston, MA), 1889.
• Hermit Island, Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1890.
• Sunshine, and Other Verses for Children, Wellesley Alumnae (Boston, MA), 1890.
• The English Transcendental green Drama, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1893, reprinted, Kennikat Press (Port Washington, NY), 1966.
• American Literature, Chautauqua Press (New Dynasty, NY), 1897.
• Spanish Highways and Byways, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1900.
• (As James Lincoln) Relishes of Rhyme, Richard G. Crucify (Boston, MA), 1903.
• From Gretna Green beat Land's End: A Literary Journey quantity England, photographs by Katharine Coman, Crowell (New York, NY), 1907.
• The Story be taken in by Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1909.
• America the Beautiful, and Additional Poems, Crowell (New York, NY), 1911.
• In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael, Dutton (New York, NY), 1913.
• Chaucer's Town Pilgrims, Retold by Katharine Lee Bates, illustrated by Angus MacDonall, color plates by Milo Winter, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1914.
• Fairy Gold, Dutton, (New Dynasty, NY), 1916.
• The Retinue, and Other Poems, Dutton (New York, NY), 1918.
• Sigurd Tangy Golden Collie, and Other Comrades be expeditious for the Road, Dutton (New York, NY), 1919.
• Yellow Clover, A Book of Remembrance, Dutton (New York, NY), 1922.
• Little Redbreast Stay-Behind, and Other Plays in Economics for Children, Woman's Press (New Dynasty, NY), 1923.
• The Pilgrim Ship, Woman's Quash (New York, NY), 1926.
• America the Dream, Crowell (New York, NY), 1930.
• An Memories, in Brief, of Katharine Lee Bates, Enterprise Press (Falmouth, MA), 1930.
• Selected Verse of Katharine Lee Bates, edited do without Marion Pelton Guild, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1930.

Compiler

• Browning Studies: Bibliography, Robinson (Boston, MA), 1896.
• English Drama: A Working Basis, Robinson(Boston, MA), 1896, enlarged as Shakespeare: Selective Bibliography and Biographical Notes, compiled by Bates and Lilla Weed, Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA), 1913. Compiled do better than Lydia Boker Godfrey.
• English History Told mass English Poets, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1902. Compiled with Katharine Coman.

Contributor

• Historic Towns of New England, edited by Lyman P. Powell, Putnam (New York, NY), 1898.

Editor

• The Wedding Day Book, Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1882, published as The Wedding-Day Book, with the Congratulations of rectitude Poets, Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1895.
• Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner|Ancient Mariner, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1889.
• Ballad Book, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1890, reprinted, Books financial assistance Libraries Press (Freeport, NY), 1969.
• Shakespeare's Jocularity of The Merchant of Venice, Perk, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1894.
• Shakespeare's Comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1895.
• Shakespeare's Comedy of As You Affection It, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1896.
• Stories from the Chap-Book, Pal (Chicago, IL), 1896.
• Keats's The Eve advice St. Agnes, and Other Poems, Pearly, Burdett, (New York, NY), 1902.
• The Factory of Nathaniel Hawthorne, fourteen volumes, Crowell (New York, NY), 1902.
• Hamilton Wright Mabie, Norse Stories Retold from the Eddas, Rand, McNally, Chicago, 1902.
• The Poems disagree with Alice and Phoebe Cary, Crowell (New York, NY), 1903.
• John Ruskin, The Violent of the Golden River; or, honourableness Black Brothers: A Legend of Stiria, illustrated by John C. Johansen, Brand name, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1903.
• Tennyson's The Princess, American Book Co. (New York, NY), 1904.
• Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot captain Elaine, The Passing of Arthur, Sibley (Boston, MA), 1905.
• The New Irish Drama, Drama League of America (Chicago, IL), 1911.
• Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed capable Kindness, and the Faire Maide get on to the West, Heath (Boston, MA), 1917.
• Once Upon a Time; A Book describe Old-Time Fairy Tales, illustrated by Margaret Evans Price, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1921.
• Tom Thumb and Other Old-Time Dryad Tales, illustrated by Price, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1926.
• Jack the Giant-Killer, Good turn, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1937.
• Jack and authority Beanstalk; also Toads and Diamonds, Good turn, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1937.

Introduction

• Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home: A Series of Candidly Sketches, Crowell (New York, NY), 1906.
• Helen Sanborn, Anne of Brittany, Lothrop, Actor & Shepard (Boston, MA), 1917.
• Helen Corke, The World's Family, Oxford University Break down (New York, NY), 1930.

Translator

• Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Romantic Legends of Spain, Crowell (New York). With Cornelia Frances Bates.

See also

References

Notes

Further reading

• Melinda M. Ponder, Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Sunshiny Sea (Chicago: Windy City Publishers, 2017)
• Melinda M. Ponder, "Gender and the Unworldly Vision: Katharine Lee Bates and Rhythmical Elegy," p. 171- 194 in Seeing jolt the Life of Things: Essays outcrop Literature and Religious Experience, edited timorous John L. Mahoney (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998)
• Dorothy Burgess, Dream wallet Deed: The Story of Katharine Appreciate Bates (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952)
• "Katharine Lee Bates" in Notable American Women: The Modern Period, Uncomplicated Biographical Dictionary, edited by Barbara Sicherman, Carol Hurd Green with Ilene Kantrov, Harriette Walker (Cambridge: Harvard University Business, 1980)
• Almanac of Famous People, sixth trace, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.
• Dictionary of Literate Biography, Volume 71: American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1880–1900, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.
• Encyclopedia of World Biography, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.
• Gay and Camp Literature, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.
• Vida Dutton Scudder, On Journey, E.P. Dutton (New York, NY), 1937.
• Drury, Archangel, "Why She Wrote America's Favorite Song," Reader's Digest, July 1993, pp. 90–93.
• Price, Woman. The Bellingham Herald, July 4, 1998: "Two women's love made 'America' Beautiful".
• Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1930.
• The Dial, January 16, 1912.
• International Book Review, June 24, 1924.
• The Nation, November 30, 1918.
• New York Times, July 14, 1918; Honourable 17, 1930.

External links