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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
“We came late enough to escape the self-consciousness and the belligerence of the pioneers, to take education and training for granted. We came early enough to take equally for granted professional positions in which we could make full use of our training. This was our double glory.” Speaking before an audience at the University of Michigan, her alma mater, in 1937 Marjorie Hope Nicolson, then Dean of Smith College, reflected on the heady years during which she, Class of 1914, and her female contemporaries came of age. These lines, later published in a well-known essay entitled “The Rights and Privileges Pertaining Thereto…,” are often quoted in histories of women's higher education to capture the circumstances—among them, peaking female enrollments, rising doctorates, and wartime employment—that buoyed the aspirations and career ambitions of college women in the early decades of the twentieth century. By vividly evoking the spirit of possibility that so deeply influenced women in the Progressive Era, Nicolson's description, in turn, offered an equally telling perspective on the disillusionment that many female graduates experienced later, in the wake of vastly changed employment realities and a widespread backlash against women's advances. “We did not realize that such fever is inevitably followed by reaction…. Within a decade shades of the prison house began to close.”
1 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “The Rights and Privileges Pertaining ‘Thereto…“ in A University Between Two Centuries, ed. Shaw, Wilfred B. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1937), 414. A condensed version of this speech appeared in Journal of American Association of University Women 31 (April 1938): 135–42.Google Scholar
2 For prominent references to Nicolson's “Rights and Privileges Pertaining Thereto” speech, see, for example, Graham, Patricia Albjerg “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education,“ Signs 3 (Summer 1978): 765 and Gordon, Lynn D. Gender and Higher Education the Progressive Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 200. For a discussion of women's opportunities in the 1920s and 1930, see Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion,” 764–765 and Barbara Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), esp. Table 2, p. 63 and Table 6, p. 133. For the experience of women who earned the doctorate before 1924, see Hutchinson, Emile Women and the Ph.D. Institute of Women's Professional Relations Bulletin no. 2 (Greensboro: North Carolina College for Women, 1929).Google Scholar
3 Nicolson, “Rights and Privileges,“ 414.Google Scholar
4 For a useful bibliography, see In Honor of Marjorie Hope Nicolson, printed by Columbia University, February 17, 1962. The main source of information on Nicolson's life is an oral history. See “The Reminiscences of Marjorie Hope Nicolson,” (1975) in the Oral History Collection of Columbia University; [hereafter MHN Oral History].Google Scholar
5 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “New Philosophy Calls All in Doubt,“ Scripps College Papers number 9 (1947), 6. See also idem., “Scholars and Ladies,” Yale Review 19 (June 1930): 778.Google Scholar
6 Ellis, A. Caswell “Preliminary Report of Committee W on Status of Women in College and University Faculties,“ Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 7 (October 1921): 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Woolf, S.J. “Woman Leader of ‘Key Men,’ New York Times Magazine, 17 March 1940, 19.Google Scholar
8 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “The Romance of Scholarship,“ in The Humanities at Scripps College (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie, 1952), 47–59; idem.,” The Rights and Privileges Pertaining Thereto…,” 403–26. See also MHN Oral History, I, #1, 3.Google Scholar
9 Patricia Graham's 1978 study provides the following account of women's early representation in the Ivy League institutions: “The first woman to be appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard was Cecelia Payne-Gaposhkin, an astronomer in 1956; at Yale, Mary Wright in Chinese History in 1959; at Princeton, Suzanne Keller, a sociologist, in 1969; and at Columbia, Nicolson in English in 1941.” See Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion,” 767. It is important to note that while Gaposhkin was the first woman in the arts and sciences to receive a full professorship at Harvard through promotion, the university had recruited and appointed its first woman professor in the arts and sciences, the British historian Helen Maud Cam, in 1948—seven years after Nicolson's appointment at Columbia. Cam held the newly endowed Samuel Zemurray, Jr., and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professorship. See Current Biography, 1948, s.v. “Cam, Helen M.”Google Scholar
10 Tayler, Edward W. “In Memoriam: Marjorie Hope Nicolson (1894–1981),“ Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (October-December 1981): 666. For student admiration of Nicolson's erudition, see AAUW award announcement, Box 952, Marjorie Hope Nicolson Papers, Smith College Archives.Google Scholar
11 According to a study by the Radcliffe Committee on Graduate Education for Women, the number of “women holding the rank of full professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in leading universities in 1954–1955,” was: California (Berkeley): 19; Chicago: 18; Wisconsin: 6; Columbia: 2; Harvard: 2; Michigan: 2; Johns Hopkins: 1; Cornell: 1; Princeton: 0; Yale: 0. See Radcliffe College, Committee on Graduate Education, Graduate Education for Women: The Radcliffe Ph. D., (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 121.Google Scholar
12 Notable American Women Modern Period, s.v. “Pound, Louise”; Notable American Women Modern Period, s.v. “White, Helen Constance.” Audrey Roberts, “Helen White Remembered,” in vol. 1, University Women, ed. Swaboda, Marian J. and Roberts, Audrey (Madison: Office of Women, 1980), 43–49. For a characterization of the MLA's first two women presidents and a somewhat different view of Pound, see Heilbrun, Carolyn G. “Presidential Address, 1984,” PMLA 100 (May 1985): 281–82Google Scholar
13 Rosenberg, Rosalind Beyond Separate Spheres: the Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Cott, Nancy The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
14 Woolf, “Women Leader,” 9 19. The membership of Phi Beta Kappa at the time was approximately one-third women and two-thirds men, see Current Biography, 1940, s.v. “Nicolson, Marjorie Hope.”Google Scholar
15 Neilson, William A. “Phi Beta Kappa's Woman President,“ The Key Reporter 5 (Autumn 1940): 1,2.Google Scholar
16 For Nicolson's recollections of her childhood, see MHN Oral History I, #1, 4–5, 7, 11.Google Scholar
17 Rousseau, G.S. “Éloge,“ Isis 73 (March 1982: 98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 MHN Oral History I, #2, 38, 56.Google Scholar
19 MHN Oral History I, #2, 38, 40, 43–44, 48, 50–52.Google Scholar
20 MHN Oral History, I, #1, 25–26; I #4, 116–17. See also, Shaw, ed., The University of Michigan, 284. MHN Oral History, Nicolson lived in the Chi Omega sorority house, as there were no university dormitories for women. Her brother could not afford to join one of the exclusive fraternities and so boarded in town. For instances of Nicolson's adamant self-reliance during her graduate years at Yale see MHN Oral History, I #4, 116–17.Google Scholar
21 MHN Oral history, I, #2, 66. After his 1913 graduation, Clyde Nicolson attended the Michigan School of Mines (B.S. E.M., 1916). Marjorie Nicolson taught English in a manual training high school in Saginaw, Michigan (her annual salary was $650), and from 1915 to 1918 at Detroit Northwestern High School and Martindale Normal School. She received her A.M. from Michigan in 1918.Google Scholar
22 MHN Oral History, I, #3, 79, 81.Google Scholar
23 MHN Oral History, I, #3, 83; see also 82–84. Nicolson always carefully noted that the professor and student were chaperoned by Wenley's wife, who sat nearby patiently knitting.Google Scholar
24 MHN Oral History, I, #3, 83–86.Google Scholar
25 MNH Oral History, I, #3, 83; I, # 4, 88. See also Marjorie Hope Nicolson, “The History of Literature and the History of Thought,” in English Institute Annual, 1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 62–63.Google Scholar
26 Tayler, “In Memoriam: Marjorie Hope Nicolson,“ 665. See also MHN Oral History, I, #3, 95.Google Scholar
27 MHN Oral History, I, #4, 101, original emphasis. For a discussion of other difficulties and disapointments that Nicolson experienced along the way as a graduate student at Yale, see MHN Oral History I, #4, 89, 11 7; I, #5, 119–20.Google Scholar
28 Rousseau, “Eloge,“ 98.Google Scholar
29 A 1921 report published by the AAUP, which surveyed 29 men's colleges and universities, found that there were no female full professors in these institutions and only two women of other professional ranks. No woman of any professional rank was reported at a men's undergraduate liberal arts college. By contrast, 45% of the full professorships and 32% of all professional ranks in women's colleges were filled by men. Women held 4% of the full professorships at coeducation colleges and universities. See Ellis, “Preliminary Report of Committee W,“ 21–23.Google Scholar
30 MHN Oral History, I, #5, 139. For biographies of Sanford and Comstock, see Clifford, Geraldine Joncich Lone Voyagers: Academic Women in Coeducational Universities 1870–1937 (New York: Feminist Press, 1989).Google Scholar
31 Bernard, Jessie Academic Women, (College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964), ix.Google Scholar
32 See Taylor, “In Memoriam,” 665. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, “The Authorship of ‘Henry the Eighth,'“ PMLA 37 (September 1922): 484–502. See also, idem., “A Generous Education,” PMLA 74 (March 1964): 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Neilson, William Allan to Nicolson, Marjorie Hope June 23, 1923, Smith Correspondence 1923–29, Box 382, Records of the Office of the President, 1917–1939; Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.; hereafter cited as ROP, Smith College Archives.Google Scholar
34 MHN Oral History II, #6, 178.Google Scholar
35 MHN Oral History II, #6, 178; II, #7, 184–85, 187. Nicolson was displeased that apparently little distinction was made in the South between girls’ “schools” and women's colleges. “Ineffectual Angels” was, in fact, the title of an article that Nicolson sold to a magazine for seventy-five dollars. The publication was postponed while the editor searched for a suitable author to write a rebuttal. Ironically, this was to be written by none other than President Neilson, with whom Nicolson was negotiating her future position at Smith. MHN Oral History, II, #7, 187. The articles apparently were not published, and I have not located any drafts or manuscripts.Google Scholar
36 Nicolson, “A Generous Education,“ 6.Google Scholar
37 Nicolson, to Neilson, William Allan June 19, 1925, Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives. I have not found documentation of Minnesota's offer; personal correspondence, January 15, 1992, from Penelope Krusch, archivist and head, University Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
38 See Thomas, J.M. Chairman, to Johnston, Dean J.B. memorandum October 15, 1921, filed along with the Minutes of Department of English, October 13, 1921. University of Minnesota Archives.Google Scholar
39 Nicolson, to Neilson, William Allan June 10, 1925, Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives.Google Scholar
40 Neilson, William Allan to Nicolson, June 12, 1925, Box 382, Neilson Papers.Google Scholar
41 Nicolson, to Neilson, William Allan June 11, 1925; Nicolson, to Neilson, William Allan June 19, 1925, Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives; See also MHN Oral History II, #7, 187.Google Scholar
42 MHN Oral History, II, #10, 278. See memorandum of Special Meeting, January 24, 1929, Trustee Instruction Committee, “English Department 1930–1939,” Box 416, ROC', Smith College Archives.Google Scholar
43 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope to Neilson, Mrs. n.d., “Saturday evening” (October 1946), folder 16, Box 982, Nicolson Papers; and, see Thorp, Margaret Farrand Neilson of Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).Google Scholar
44 Rossiter, Margaret in fact, describes Nicolson as a “major academic stateswoman of the 1920s,” see Rossiter, Margaret Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982), 363n12; see also, Nicolson, “A Generous Education,” 3–12.Google Scholar
45 Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz Alma Mater: Designed Experience in the Women's College for their Nineteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930s (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 279–294, esp. 284. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 153–171.Google Scholar
46 Nicolson, “A Generous Education,“ 4.Google Scholar
47 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “The Value of the Academic Life,” Box 954 Nicolson Papers. Similarly, during World War II, Nicolson, then Phi Beta Kappa president, disagreed with Mrs. Roosevelt's assertion that women students should interupt their educations and immediately join the war effort. See “Women's opportunity for Service,“ clipping dated December 11, 1942, Box 954, Nicolson Papers.Google Scholar
48 Speech, Chapel October 5, 1938; “Address to Alumnae Council;” Chapel speech transcript, June 14, 1940, all in box 954, Nicolson Papers; Nicolson, “Address of the Presidential Nominee,” School and Society 51 (March 2, 1940): 279–80; and, Woolf, 19.Google Scholar
49 Nicolson, “Rights and Privileges…,“ 416. Margaret Rossiter underscored Nicolson's support for offering men higher salaries and more rapid advancement in order to strengthen Smith's institutional prestige. See Rossiter, Women Scientists, 364n15 and idem., Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995) 462n45. Barnard's Dean Virginia Gildersleeve encountered similar challenges in faculty selection. See Virginia Gildersleeve, A Good Crusade (New York: MacMillan, 1954), 78.Google Scholar
50 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,“ 788.Google Scholar
51 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope to Clark, Miss November 1, 1928, original emphasis, Box 952, Nicolson Papers; Nicolson, to Neilson, Mr. November 7, 1928, Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives. Neilson Papers. Similar remarks Nicolson had made privately earlier drew criticism from the League of Women Voters, Nicolson to Neilson, November 7, 1928, Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives.Google Scholar
52 The newspaper article, entitled “We Need More Research,” criticized Nicolson for comment she had made during a Phi Beta Kappa address at the University of Rochester. Her speech apparently cast the blame on women for their subordinate positions in academe rather than on men's attitudes. See note typed on newspaper clipping, n.d., Box 382, ROP, Smith College, Archives.Google Scholar
53 The work was based on Nicolson's prize winning dissertation study and additional research that she completed at Cambridge, the Bodelian, and the British Museum during her Guggenheim fellowship year in England. A collection of letters from Nicolson to her mentor, A.O. Lovejoy, housed in the A.O. Lovejoy Collection at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, John Hopkins University, captures Nicolson's fascination with this particular project. Nicolson's The Conway Letters was one of the first scholarly works to suggest the still debated notion that writing of Anne Finch influenced Leibnitz. See Nicolson, Marjorie Hope The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, 1642–1684 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), 455–56; and “The Real Scholar Gypsy,” Yale Review 18 (December 1928): 347–63. As Sarah Hutton notes in her introduction to a recent, revised edition of Nicolson's classic, “In many ways Professor Nicolson's work was ahead of its time and pioneered areas subsequently more fully explored. Even where later scholars disagree with her conclusions, they are indebted to her admirable spadework.” See The Conway Letters, revised edition, with an Introduction and new material by Sarah Hutton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), xii.Google Scholar
54 See Horner, Joyce M. “The English Women Novelists and their Connection with the Feminist Movement (1688–1897),“ Smith Studies in Modern Language 11 (October 1929): 1–152. In the preface, Horner thanks her Smith Professors Mary Ellen Chase and Marjorie Hope Nicolson. She also clarifies her use of the term “feminist” in discussing the lives of these women by underscoring that these were “individual battles they were fighting, not battle of their whole sex.” (emphasis mine)Google Scholar
55 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “Science and Imagination,“ Alumnae Weekend Manuscript (October 19, 1935), 6. Box 952, Nicolson Papers. See also, idem., “The Early Stage of Cartesianism in England,” Studies in Philology 26 (July 1929): 371; and idem., “The Microscope and English Imagination,” Smith College Studies in Modern Languages 16 (July 1935): 92.Google Scholar
56 Nicolson, “Rights and Privileges…,“ 405.Google Scholar
57 See notes 1 and 5.Google Scholar
58 Nicolson, “Scholar and Ladies,“ 779; Current Biography, 1940, s.v. “Nicolson, Marjorie Hope.”Google Scholar
59 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,“ 795.Google Scholar
60 Ibid., 794Google Scholar
61 Nicolson, “Rights and Privileges…,” 418 Google Scholar
62 Woolf, “Women Leader,“ 19.Google Scholar
63 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,” 794; See also Woolf, “Women Leader,“ 19.Google Scholar
64 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,“ 793–95.Google Scholar
65 Ibid., 791.Google Scholar
66 Nicolson was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in her senior year. Nicolson felt that in the years before the university had instituted a formal grading system, women had been elected to Michigan's Phi Beta Kappa chapter, but that “men were picking the best looking women students.” MHN Oral History’ I, #2, 62. For Nicolson's view of Anne Finch, see Conway Letters, XXV.Google Scholar
67 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,” 791, 789; idem., “We Need More Research,“ 1 May 1938 clipping, Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives. See idem., “Experiments of Light,” review of Madame Curie: A Biography, by Curie, Eve in Essays of Three Decades, ed. Bader, Arno L. and Well, Carlton F. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939), 469.Google Scholar
68 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,“ 792 793.Google Scholar
69 According to William Chafe's research, seventy-five percent of the women who earned the Ph.D. between 1875 and 1924 remained single, see William Chafe, The American Woman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 100, as cited in Graham, 771.Google Scholar
70 Smith College News, 10 March 1981.Google Scholar
71 Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion,“ 759–763, especially 765.Google Scholar
72 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “Rights and Privileges…,” 414. The poetical reference is to William Wordsworth's “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,“ stanza v.Google Scholar
73 Nicolson, in fact, had planned to dedicate the Conway Letters to Wenley and was saddened that he passed away shortly before the volume appeared in 1930. Nicolson, The Conway Letters, xv; MHN Oral History, I, #3, 86–87.Google Scholar
74 Nicolson, “Scholars and Ladies,” 792. Nicolson believed, for instance, that Jane Carlyle's preference for “one set of duties” lost to the world “a writer of first rank.” See Nicolson, “Women as Letter Writers,“ Yale Review 21 (June 1932): 854. Albany, Evening News, 20 May 1929, Box 954, Nicolson Papers.Google Scholar
75 Nicolson, to Neilson, William Allan n. d. (Spring 1935), Box 382, ROP, Smith College Archives. MHN Oral History, II #10: 320–21.Google Scholar
76 Wright, Ernest Hunter to Advisory Committee on Educational Policy, November 15, 1939, Central Files Collection, University Archives, Columbia University, New York City, New York [hereafter Wright Central Files.]Google Scholar
77 Wright, Ernest to Pegram, Dean December 16, 1939, Wright Central Files. See also Dean Gildersleeve to Marjorie Hope Nicolson, December 18, 1939, Dean's Office Records, Barnard College Archives, New York.Google Scholar
78 A copy of the memorandum that Wright, E. H. sent to President Butler on January 12, 1940 is attached to another letter that Wright sent to Butler a few days later, on January 15, 1940, in Wright Central Files.Google Scholar
79 For a discussion of Benedict's circumstances, see Caffrey, Margaret Ruth Benedict: Stranger in the Land (Austin: University of Texas, 1989), 276–278.Google Scholar
80 McBain, Dean Howard allegedly expressed this view in consideration of the anthropologist Ruth Benedict's advancement; see Caffrey, Ruth Benedict, 276.Google Scholar
81 Wright, Ernest Hunter to Butler, President January 12, 1940, Wright Central Files.Google Scholar
82 Fackenthal, Frank to Wright, Ernest Hunter Janaury 15, 1940, Wright Central Files.Google Scholar
83 Wright, Ernest Hunter to Butler, Nicholas Murray March 11, 1940 and April 3, 1940; Butler, President to Wright, Ernest Hunter April 3, 1940; and Butler, President to Nicolson, Marjorie Hope April 3, 1940; all in Wright Central FilesGoogle Scholar
84 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope to President Nicholas Murray Butler, April 7, 1940, Nicolson Central Files.Google Scholar
85 Nicolson's letter acknowledged the University's generosity when it informed her that it planned to double her salary raise. Nicolson, to Fackenthal, Frank April 7, 1947, Nicolson Central Files.Google Scholar
86 Remarks delivered by Professor Alice Fredman, Memorial Service for Nicolson, Marjorie Hope April 29, 1981 (in author's possession); Nicolson, Marjorie Hope “The Professor and the Detective,” Atlantic Monthly 1511 (April 1929): 483–93.Google Scholar
87 Campbell, Oscar James “The Department of English and Comparative Literature,“ in Herman Randell, John Jr., A History of the Faculty of Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957) 72, 90, 99. See also Graff, Gerald and Warner, Michael eds., The Origins of Literary Studies in America: A Documentary Anthology (New York: Routledge, 1989), introduction; Veysey, Laurence “Plural Organized Worlds of the Humanities,” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920, ed. Oleson, Alexandra and Voss, John (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 54.Google Scholar
88 See Nicolson's review of Motimer Adler's How to Read a Book in Yale Review 30 (September 1940): 180.Google Scholar
89 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope Newton Demands the Muse: Newton's Opticks and the Eightreenth-Century Poets (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 22.Google Scholar
90 See Bevis, Richard “Eternal Snows: Pope's Temple of Fame and the ‘Aesthetics of the Infinite,“ Eighteenth-Century Life 9 October 1986): 44–58. Literary interest in Nicolson seems to be increasing, see note 51 and Marjorie Hope Nicholson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, with a foreward by William Cronon (Seattle: University of Washington, 1997).Google Scholar
91 See Wellek, René “Literary Scholarship,“ in Curti, Merle ed., American Scholarship in the Twentieth Century (New York: Russell and Russell, 1953), 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
92 Smith President Herbert Davis to Butler, Nicholas Murray September 16, 1940, Nicolson Central Files.Google Scholar
93 Freedman, Morris “Marjorie Hope Nicolson,“ The American Scholar 50 (Winter 1981): 87.Google Scholar
94 The Columbia-educated literary scholar Heilbrun, Carolyn G. offers her perspective on her student years in the department where both Nicolson and Susanne Nobbe taught in Carolyn G. Heilbrun, “The Profession and Society, 1958–83,” PMLA 99 (May 1989): 41 1Google Scholar
95 Colie, Rosalie “O quam te Memorem, Marjorie Hope Nicolson!,“ The American Scholar 34 (Summer 1965): 469.Google Scholar
96 By the late 1940s, Columbia's English Department had established itself as the nation's premier group of university literary scholars and teachers (AAU rating number 1), Campbell, “The Department of English and Comparative Litertature,“ 95.Google Scholar
97 Nicolson's earlier association with Lovejoy and Neilson, both prominent figures in the early years of the AAUP, nurtured and strengthened her commitment to the integrity of the academic profession. Nicolson, for example, joined John Dewey, William Allan Neilson, Morris Raphael Cohen, and Robert Sproul in sponsoring the Academic Freedom Bertrand Russell Committee, clipping, folder 30, Box 982.1, Nicolson Papers.Google Scholar
98 Nicolson, to Vice President Krout, John A. November 24, 1954; report December 15, 1954; report January 12, 1955, Nicolson Central Files.Google Scholar
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102 Projecting herself as an intellectual “daughter of Martha” Nicolson delivered the concluding remarks, entitled “Two Voices,” at the three-day Rockefeller-funded symposium, “The Humanistic Tradition in the Century Ahead,” Princeton University, October 18, 1946. Attendees included, among others, MacIver, Robert Neibuhr, Reinhold Hutchins, Robert and MacLeish, Archibald Of the fifty-one attendees, there were only three women. In 1954, Nicolson served on Columbia's Bicentennial Program Committee on “The Unity of Knowledge,” along with Hofstadter, Albert Leary, Lewis Nagel, Ernest Lang, Paul Trilling, Lionel Rabi, I.I. and Dusen, Dr. Van. See clipping file, Columbiana Collection, Columbia University.Google Scholar
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104 Nicolson, “Merchants of Lights,” 356. In the early 1940s Nicolson served along with Teachers College's critic of progressive education Isaac Kandel and Columbia's Oscar J. Campbell and Horatio Smith as a member of the MLA's “Commission on Trends in Education.“ See Nicolson, “Literature in American Education,“ American Scholar 13 (Winter 1943–1944): 122–25.Google Scholar
105 Nicolson's review of the Harvard report both reflected her standing as an academic statewoman and her willingness to urge professors to see themselves also as teachers and, therefore, to be concerned with the quality of education at all levels. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, “Education in America,” Yale Review 35 (March 1946): 537, 538.Google Scholar
106 Campbell, “The Department of English and Comparative Literature,“ 97.Google Scholar
107 See Tributes to Adele Mendelson, Department of English and Comparative Literature Folder, Columbiana Collection, Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
108 Mazzeo, Joseph ed., Reason and Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas, 1600–1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).Google Scholar
109 See Alumnae Survey of 1924, University of Michigan Alumni Association Records, Box 110, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. I would like to thank archivist Nancy Bartlett for bringing this survey to my attention.Google Scholar
110 Quoted in New York Times, 29 December 1963; Nicolson, “A Generous Education,” 6.Google Scholar
111 Nicolson, “A Generous Education,“ 12.Google Scholar
112 I have found no master's essay or dissertation on Nicolson's life and career.Google Scholar