Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of Nancy Byrd Turner, Accession #11501, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The Nancy Byrd Turner Papers were purchased by the University of Virginia Library from Jerry Showalter on April 21, 1999.

Biographical/Historical Information

Nancy Byrd Turner (1880-1971) was born in Boydton, Virginia, on July 29, 1880, the oldest child of the Reverend Byrd Thornton Turner, an Episcopal minister, and Nancy Addison Harrison Turner. She was educated first at home and then at the Hannah More Academy, the Maryland Diocesan school for girls in Reisterstown, Maryland, graduating in 1898. Her four brothers and sisters include: Mary Wilmer Turner Rose (1881- 1959), Elizabeth Thornton Turner (1884-1962), Thornton Harrison Turner (1886-1954), and Holmes Conrad Turner (1889-1945).

Nancy Byrd Turner lived primarily in Virginia, except for about a sixteen year period when she lived in Boston, Massachusetts, joining the staff of The Youth's Companion , in 1916, becoming editor of its children's page, 1918-1922. She also worked on the editorial staffs of The Independent, Boston , in 1926, Houghton Mifflin & Company, and The Atlantic Monthly . Turner also began giving public readings from her work at the same time. Her poetry has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's, Harper's, The New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, The Ladies Home Journal , and The Cornwall Magazine . Nancy Byrd Turner spent twenty- two summers at the MacDowell Artists' Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and her correspondence reflects that association. Her books include Zodiac Town, Magpie Lane: Poems, The Mother of Washington, Star in a Well: Poems, A Riband on My Rein: Poems, Silver Saturday: Poems for the Home, Sycamore Silver, When It Rained Cats and Dogs , and edited Testament of Happiness: Letters by Annie Oakes Huntington .

Awards include The Golden Rose in 1930, a tribute given annually by the New England Poetry Club, the Lyric Foundation Award in 1951 (the first woman and Virginian to be so honored), prizes in the yearly poetry contests held by the Poetry Society of Virginia, the Williamsburg Award in 1950, and the Keats Memorial Prize in 1958.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of the literary and personal papers of Nancy Byrd Turner (1880-1971), ca. 6,750 items (18 Hollinger boxes, ca. 7.5 linear feet), ca. 1831-1987, a Virginia poet and children's author, born in Boydton, Virginia, the daughter of a minister, the Reverend Byrd Thornton Turner and Nancy Harrison. Pen names used by Nancy Byrd Turner include: Jane Rolfe, Randolph Virginia Harrison, Martha Dabney, Rachel Field, Jasper Lewis, Anne Madison, Mary Louise Wilmer, Mary Ambler Marshall, and Virginia Stanard. The papers contain the personal and professional correspondence of Nancy Byrd Turner and other members of the Turner family, correspondence of the Reverend Melvin Lee Steadman, Jr., acting as her literary executor and friend, and permission files.

Other material includes manuscripts, both autograph and typescript, and printed examples of many of her poems and short stories, articles, and plays; examples of her poems set to music; notes and notebooks kept by Turner; diaries of Nancy Byrd Turner and miscellaneous autobiographical materials, as well as Steadman's biography of Turner. There are also some manuscripts by other authors, especially her sister, Elizabeth Thornton Turner, who taught at the Blue Ridge Industrial School for more than forty years until she retired in 1952.

Also present are news clippings about Turner and her lectures and poetry readings; memorabilia; biographical sketches of Turner; book reviews about her work; genealogical material about the Turner and related families; papers about several of her brothers and sisters; lecture notes; files on the Hannah More Academy, where Turner attended school; a file on the MacDowell Colony, where Turner spent many beneficial seasons; and photographs of Nancy Byrd Turner, her family and friends, and several of the residences where the Turners lived over the years.

Correspondents of Nancy Byrd Turner with their own individual folders include: Katherine Lee Bates, Abbie Farwell Brown, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Anne Getchel, Miss John Francis Ham, Bert Henderson, Anthony De Wolfe Howe, Helen Howe, Mabel and Eleanor Johnson, Marian Griswold Nevins MacDowell (1857-1956), Harry M. Meacham, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Haven Schauffler, Ellery Sedgwick and Edward Weeks, Melvin and Beth Steadman, Florence Dickinson Stearns, Anne & Paul Swett. Emma Gray Trigg (1890-1976), Ulrich Troubetzkoy, Nancy Byrd Turner to her sister, Mary W. Turner, and Frederic Viaux.

The general correspondence folders consist of: many letters of acceptance and rejection for her poetry submissions to various periodicals, including her first significant acceptance letter from The Smart Set (1902 Jan 25); correspondence with her family, especially in the earliest correspondence; letters from Nancy Byrd Turner while attending the Hannah More Academy (1897) and while serving John Singleton as a governess for nine months in Peytonsburg, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in 1901; fan mail and letters from Turner about her mother's illness (1903). Other family correspondence can also be found in the second series of Correspondence of the Turner Family and Others (Boxes 8-9).

Organization

This collection is arranged in three series: 1) Correspondence of Nancy Byrd Turner & Permission Letters (Boxes 1-8) 2) Correspondence of the Turner Family & Others, Chiefly Concerning Nancy Byrd Turner (Box 8-9) and 3) Manuscripts and Miscellaneous Papers (Boxes 9-18). The first series is arranged with the general correspondence of Nancy Byrd Turner with family, friends, admirers, and publishers first, followed by Turner's permission letters, both groups in chronological order. The second series contains folders of individual family correspondents or those of Melvin Steadman.

Individual Correspondents of Note in the General Correspondence:

Cornelia Aldridge (1911 Sep 11; 1912 Feb 9; 1913 Apr 3; 1914 Sep 18, Dec 23; 1918 Aug 18)
Nancy Astor (1923 May 31)
Esther Willard Bates (1953 Apr 19; n.d.)
William Rose Benet, 1886-1950 (1935 Dec 18)
Natalie Blanton (1956 May 16; 1958 Sep 13, Dec 8; 1959 Jun 11, Aug 2)
Kathleen E. Bruce (1917 Feb 15; 1918 Mar 24)
Edith Butler (1941 Nov 1; 1948 Feb 6; 1950 Apr 20, Jul 27; 1951 Apr 20; [1957 Jan 18?]; n.d.)
Henry S. Canby (1935 Nov 18)
Margaret Carpenter (n.d.)
Russell Chauvenet (1948 Jul 18, Aug 31)
Imogen Clark (1912 Jul, Sep; 1913 Jan 1; n.d.)
William Meade Clark, editor of The Southern Churchman (1906 Sep 22, Oct 4)
William Fayal Clarke, 1855-1935, (1907 Apr 2, Oct 18; 1908 Mar 17)
Grace Noll Crowell, 1877-1969 (1934 Jan 16; n.d.)
T.D. Pendleton Cummins (1914 Jan 5; 1915 Apr 4, Nov 5, [1915 Nov 11?]; 1916 Jan 17)
Virginia Kent Cummins (1949 Nov 5; 1950 Jan 7; 1951 Jan 28)
Virginius Dabney (1953 Aug 17 re Joseph McCarthy)
Wesley Dennis ([post 1958 Jun 25]; n.d.)
Peter De Vries (1948 Apr 6) Arthur Dickson, 1889-? (1949 Aug 18)
Agnes Emelie (1939 Jan 16) Marjorie Ffrangcon-Davies (1939 May 30, Jun 28, Jul 28)
Beverley Fleet (1947 Jul 26; 1948 Jan 15, 26)
Lukas Foss, 1922-? (1944 Dec 14;1949 Nov 22)
Douglas Southall Freeman (1949 Jan 6)
Lesley Frost (n.d.)
Armistead C. Gordon (1909 Dec 31; 1912 Dec 29 )
William D. Gresham (1959 Dec 2)
Sidney Allan Gunn (ca. 1935)
Hermann Hagedorn (1944 Mar 7)
DuBose Heyward, 1885-1940, (1930 Nov 12)
Margaret Hopkins (1911 Apr 20; 1912 Mar 15; 1914 Jan 3, Jun 18, Jul 11; 1916 Apr 9, Oct 12; 1917 Feb 9, Mar 14; n.d.)
Elizabeth Quincy Howe (1947 Jul 28, Aug 19)
Anne Page Johns (1957 Nov 6; 1958 Jun 20; 1959 Mar 15; 1963 Mar 12; n.d.)
Josephine Johnson, 1892-? (1938 Mar 11; 1945 Nov 9, Dec 4; 1946 May 10; 1958 Mar 2; 1959 Apr 23, n.d.)
Robert Underwood Johnson, 1853-1937 (1911 Jan 25)
Callom H. Jones, with Casual Detachment 133rd Infantry in Great Britain (1942 Mar 15)
Louise Andrews Kent, 1886-1969 (n.d.)
May Kingdon, d. 1962 (1937 Dec 19; 1938 Feb 24; 1947 Feb 26, Mar 13; 1954 Jan 1, Jul 26; 1956 Jan 3; 1959 Jan 14; 1961 May 24; 1962 Jan 10 & 15, the last two about her death)
Raymond E.L. Larsson (1956 Jun 13)
Mary Sinton Leitch (1947 Apr 15; 1948 Feb 4, Dec 3; 1949 Jan 28; 1950 Apr 16, Sep 14; 1951 Aug 15, Nov 21 & 30; 1952 Sep 29; 1954 Aug 10)
Margaret Lloyd (1939 Christmas; 1940 Easter, Dec 27; 1945 Nov 26; 1946 Dec 11; 1951 Nov 9; 1954 Dec 20; n.d.)
Kathleen Lyle (1938 Apr 16)
Harold Wesley Melvin, 1892-? (1949 Jun 8)
John Clair Minot and Turner's career at Youth's Companion (1913 May 6, Aug 23, Nov 21, Dec 4; 1916 Mar 16 & 18; 1918 Apr 11, Sep 12 & 30; 1922 Jul 1)
Harriet Monroe, 1860-1936 (1916 Mar 3; 1936 Mar 20)
Virginia Moore (1935 May 6)
Howard Moss (1948 Apr 23)
Thomas Moult (1957 Mar 6)
Vernon Perdue-Davis (1957 Jan 21; 1958 Aug 26, Sep 4; 1959 Feb 10, Oct)
Agnes Peterson (1958 Jan 10; 1965 Jan 25; n.d.)
Charlotte Endymion Porter, 1859-1942 (1930 Apr 26)
Miriam Clarke Potter (1947 Jan 8, Sep 7; 1948 May 20; 1954 Sep 10 re India)
Katherine Hill Rawls (1958 Mar 12)
Bernard Robb (1959 Apr 22)
Frances Diane Robotti (1947 Aug 23)
Elmo Russ (1935 Feb 13)
Katherine Salter:
[Re the effects of a hurricane on Long Island, comments re Hermann Hagedorn's biography of E.A. Robinson, Czechoslovakia's loss of Sudetenland to Hitler through the Munich Agreement, and her fears for Central Europe (1938 Nov 25); Hitler and pogroms in Germany (1938 Dec 31; 1939 Mar 20); persecutions against the Jews and mention of Dr. Einstein playing the violin (1939 Jun 15, Aug 12); her editorials against Nazi propaganda in Wisconsin (1940 Aug 25); Carter Glass (1941 Mar 30); more on Nazism and religion (1943 Oct 19; 1944 Sep 21 & 25, Nov 15; 1946 Oct 28, Nov 1; n.d.)]
Mary Willis Shelburne (1951 Nov 26)
Ellen B. Sherman ([1915]; n.d.)
Reba Barrett Smith (1936 Nov 19)
Margaret Speaks (1943 Feb 25, Mar 10)
Ernest N. Stevens (1948 May 21)
"Still There is Bethlehem" controversy over (1939 Jun 28, Jul 28, Aug 22)
Roberta Newton Taylor (1957 Dec 7; 1958 Mar 4; 1963 Aug 3)
Professor William M.Thornton (1929 Dec 25)
Benjamin B[atchelder?] Valentine (1904 Dec 13)
Hendrik Willem Van Loon re concept of genius, copy (1942 May 28)
Jane Van Nuys, d. 1940, (n.d.)
Frederic Viaux ([ca. 1954?]; 1956 Feb 14, 16, & 20; n.d.)
Jacques Villois (1932 Aug 4)
Eleanor Johnson Walker (1938 Mar 11; n.d.)
Mitchell Weir, 1829-1914 (n.d.)
Elizabeth White ([1965] Jan 21)
[Katherine?] S. White (1939 Jun 9)
Thornton Wilder (1939 Jun 23)
George Edward Woodberry, 1855-1930 (1921 May 24)
William Hervey Woods, 1852- ? (1908 Nov 19, with copy of poem attached; 1911 Oct 2; 1912 Dec 21; 1913 Nov 18; 1914 Feb 13; 1915 May 4 & 25, Oct 12)