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COLLECTION Identifier: MC 184

Papers of Marjorie White, ca.1930-ca.1970

Overview

Notebooks containing published and unpublished articles, photos, clippings, and notes on women and correspondence of Marjorie White, collector.

Dates

  • Creation: 1930-1970

Creator

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Access Restrictions:

Access. Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Marjorie White is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College for the Schlesinger Library. Copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.

Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.

Extent

19.06 linear feet (44+1/2 file boxes, 1 card file)

This collection consists primarily of over one hundred loose-leaf notebooks filled with published and unpublished articles, newsclippings, photographs and notes on women throughout history and prehistory and on various subjects related to women, with an extensive section on North American Indian women. Marjorie White collected this material at a time when information on women was scattered and spotty; Mary R. Beard gave recognition to its usefulness in the Acknowledgments to Woman as Force in History (1946).

To a great extent the notebooks reflect an interest in prehistoric woman as priestess, midwife and originator of culture. This interest was stimulated by Marjorie White's association with Mary Milbank Brown, who evolved a theory of a matriarchal period preceding the post-Platonic patriarchy; she believe that men had redefined originally "matristic" words in an esoteric, "patristic" code, still in use by "initiated" philosophers and scientists. Correspondence with Mary Milbank Brown, and notes and outlines by her, are found mainly in folder 157 some of her unpublished writings appear in 143-145 and 147, and correspondence about her and her work in 151 (including letters by Dr. Bruno Oetteking and copies of letters from Pearl Buck to Jane Grant).

There is a good deal of correspondence with Mary Ritter Beard, as well as some of her writings. This material, found mainly in 150a-e, 154 and 155, concerns itself with the World Center for Women's Archives, a proposed Woman's Research Institute, Mary Milbank Brown's work, the Encyclopedia Britannica (often referred to as "CB"), and Collier's Encyclopedia. There were projects afoot to correct the treatment of women in these two encyclopedias, and Marjorie White contemplated an Encyclopedia of Women, but none of these was ever completed. The World Center for Women's Archives also met with failure, due to World War II and lack of funds, but gave an impetus to the collecting by other institutions of papers by and about women.

Other correspondents include Herma Briffault, Dora Edinger, C. Esther Hodge (editor of the English periodical, Women Speaking), Miriam Y. Holden, Inez Haynes Irwin, Dr. Blanche Christine Olschak, and Doris Stevens. These women and others shared a concern for correcting the general view of woman's role in history and thus pioneered and foreshadowed the more widespread interest manifested a quarter of a century later.

Correspondence in the Marjorie White Collection was written between 1936 and 1967; the articles and newsclippings were collected from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Materials have been transferred from notebooks to folders, retaining the original numbering.

BIOGRAPHY

Marjorie White was born on January 24, 1894, in Seattle, Washington, and died February 20, 1972. She lived in Forest Hills, New York.

Physical Location

Collection stored off site: researchers must request access 36 hours before use.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession numbers: 73-71, 81-M54, 97-M107

The papers of Marjorie White were given to the Schlesinger Library in June 1973, February 1981, and August 1997 by her daughter, Zalmar Perlin.

Related Material:

There is related material at the Schlesinger Library; see Papers of Zalmar Whitworth Perlin, 1930?-1980 (81-M12--81-M54).

SEPARATION RECORD

The following items have been removed from the collection and returned to the donor:

  1. Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labor
  2. Langer, Suzanne K. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling
  3. La Follette, Suzanne. Concerning Women
  4. Kelly, Amy. Eleanor of Aquitaine
  5. Penny, Virginia. The Employments of Women
  6. Sheerwood, Mrs. John. Manners and Social Usages
  7. Farber, S.M., and Wilson, R.H.L., eds. The Potential of Woman
  8. Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics
  9. National American Woman Suffrage Association. Victory, How Women Won It
  10. Neff, Wanda Fraiken. Victorian Working Women
  11. Landes, Ruth. The City of Women
  12. Rothery. The Amazons in Antiquity and Modern Times
  13. Williams, H. Noel. Five Fair Sisters
  14. Putnam, Emily James. The Lady
  15. Pinchbeck, Ivy. Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution
  16. Wolfson, Theresa. The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions
  17. Gamble, Eliza Burt. The Sexes in Science and History
  18. Walsh, Correa Moylan. Feminism
  19. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Marquis de Sade
  20. Reik, Theodor. Masochism in Sex and Society
  21. Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas
  22. Reik, Theodor. Sex (in Man and Woman, etc.)
  23. Dickenson, Ellen Key. The Woman Question
  24. Freud, Sigmund. On Creativity and the Unconscious
  25. Beard, Mary R. America Through Women's Eyes
  26. Reik, Theodor. The Creation of Woman
  27. Deutsch, Helene. The Psychology of Women, 2 vols
  28. Kinsey, et al. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
  29. Vaerting, Mathilde and Mathias. The Dominant Sex
  30. Klein, Viola. The Feminine Character
  31. Swiney, Frances. Woman and Natural Law
  32. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Sex and Repression in Savage Society
  33. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1954: "Women in Public Life."
  34. President's Commission on the Status of Women. American Women
  35. Young, Louise M., ed. "Women's Opportunities and Responsibilities." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1947
  36. Annals... "Women in the Modern World." 1929
  37. Christense, C.L. Man and Woman in Prehistory
  38. Henry, Alice. Memoirs of Alice Henry
  39. Daedalus, Spring 1964. "The Woman in America." 2 copies
  40. Bebel, August. Woman in the Past, Present and Future
  41. Bebel, August. Woman and Socialism
  42. Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo
  43. Brown, J.A.C. Freud and the Post-Freudians
  44. Ellis, Havelock. The Dance of Life
  45. Bachoffen, J.J. Myth, Religion and Mother Right: Selected Writings of
  46. Jung, Carl G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections
  47. Borgese, Elisabeth Mann. Ascent of Woman
  48. Goodsel, Willystine. A History of Marriage and the Family
  49. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Man-Made World, or Our Androcentric Culture
  50. White, E.M. Woman in World History: Her Place in the Great Religions
  51. Ellis, Albert, and Abarbanel, Albert. Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior
  52. Edinger, Dora. Bertha Pappenheim, Freud's Anna O.
  53. Veblen, Thorstein. The Higher Learning in America
  54. Engels, Frederick. The Origin of the Family
  55. Smith, W. Robertson. Kinship and Marriage
  56. Taylor, G. Rattray. Sex in History
  57. Stern, Karl. The Flight from Woman
  58. Reik, Theodor. Of Love and Lust
  59. Rogers, Katherine M. The Troublesome Helpmate
  60. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique
  61. Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics
  62. Hays, H.R. The Dangerous Sex
  63. Parsons, Elsie Clews. The Old-Fashioned Woman: Primitive Fancies about the Sex
  64. Preedy, George R. This Shining Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin)
  65. Parsons, Elsie Clews. The Family
  66. Hall, Gladys Mary. Prostitution in the Modern World
  67. National Manpower Council. Womanpower
  68. Stopes, Marie. Married Love
  69. Greenwald, H., and Krich, Aron. The Prostitute in Literature
  70. Bachofen, Johann Jakob. Das Mutterrecht. 2 vols
  71. Brown, Mary Milbank. The Historical Approach to the Theory of Relativity. 2 vols
  72. Brown, Mary Milbank. The Secret History of Jeanne d'Arc
  73. Elephas (pseud. of Mary Milbank Brown). The Fabulous Ass

CONTAINER LIST

  1. Box 1: 1-4b
  2. Box 2: 5-8a
  3. Box 3: 9-12a
  4. Box 4: 13-16a
  5. Box 5: 17-20a
  6. Box 6: 21-23Bb
  7. Box 7: 24-27a
  8. Box 8: 28-31a
  9. Box 9: 32-36a
  10. Box 10: 37-40a
  11. Box 11: 41-44a
  12. Box 12: 45-48a
  13. Box 13: 49-52a
  14. Box 14: 53-56a
  15. Box 15: 57-60a
  16. Box 16: 61-64a
  17. Box 17: 65-69a
  18. Box 18: 70-74a
  19. Box 19: 75-78a
  20. Box 20: 79-82a
  21. Box 21: 83-87a
  22. Box 22: 88-92a
  23. Box 23: 93-96a
  24. Box 24: 97-10b
  25. Box 25: 102-105a
  26. Box 26: 106-109a
  27. Box 27: 110-112a
  28. Box 28: 113-117a
  29. Box 29: 118-121a
  30. Box 30: 122-125a
  31. Box 31: 126-130
  32. Box 32: 131-135a
  33. Box 33: 136-140
  34. Box 34: 141-146a
  35. Box 35: 147-149e
  36. Box 36: 149f-152
  37. Box 37: 153-159a
  38. Box 38: 160-163b
  39. Box 39: 164-166a
  40. Box 40: 167-173
  41. Box 41: 174-177
  42. Box 42: 178-180
  43. Box 43: 181-184
  44. Box 44: 185-189
  45. Box 45: 190-191
  46. Card Box 46: 192

Processing Information

Processed: September 1973

Folder #172 was added to the collection in August 2021.

Title
White, Marjorie, 1894-1972. Papers of Marjorie White, ca.1930-ca.1970: A Finding Aid
Author
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
Language of description
eng
EAD ID
sch00963

Repository Details

Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository

The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.

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