Mina Kirstein Curtiss papers

The Mina Kirstein Curtiss Papers contain letters to her from well-known authors, poets, critics, and composers. The papers span the dates 1917-1966.

The papers consist of twenty-eight folders of alphabetically arranged correspondence. The letters are both personal and professional in character and frequently refer to Curtiss's publications.

The most personal of the letters were written by Franklin P. Adams and reveal a courtship that almost led to marriage. The letters from Louis Untermeyer, however, have a mentor quality. He criticizes her writing, accepts some of it for publication in the literary journal The Seven Arts, and acts as an intermediary in the publication of her first book, Olive, Cypress and Palm: An Anthology of Love and Death (1930), a selection of works by other poets.

The Alice B. Toklas letters refer to visits and historical research associated with the writing of Letters of Marcel Proust (1949), and Virgil Thomson's letters mention his collaboration with Mina on Bizet and His World (1958) and chronicle the friendship between Toklas and Curtiss. An interesting passage in the Toklas letter of June 18, 1949, illustrates the gentle candor with which Alice writes of others: "Virgil has taken his success quietly and gently--which in him is almost unnatural. It is . . . beyond anything one would have expected from the young Virgil who showed sweetness and light only in his music." Thomson's letters are equally revealing. On August 25, 1950 he writes to Mina, "I feel wonderful and have been as usual a success."

Professional and personal matters also overlap in the letters of Carl Van Vechten, Aline Bernstein, and Archibald MacLeish. In MacLeish's letter of October 29, 1929, he encloses a poem written after the sudden death of Mina's husband. Aline Bernstein's letters discuss, among other things, their mutual interest in the theater. Carl Van Vechten helped Mina bring one of her protégés, poet Hugh K. Johnson, to the attention of Langston Hughes.

Also included in the correspondence are letters from William Bullitt, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Edmund Wilson, and Glenway Wescott. These letters mention Curtiss's writings, allude to friendships, and discuss various social events. The collection also includes an undated Christmas card from Thomas Wolfe and a letter of appreciation from Alger Hiss.