Doris Holmes Blake - Correspondence with Doris Sidney Blake, November 1947 - January 1948

About the Project

Doris Sidney Blake got a new temporary job at Harvard’s bookstore, The Coop, where she earned a little money and worked hard to memorize the lay of the land. Oh, and it’s also where she encountered a whole lot of misogyny. In a letter to her mother, Smithsonian entomologist Doris Holmes Blake, she wrote of a man who spoke to at her about the “decline in productivity among cultured females.” In another instance, she retold a story about a man at the store who accused women of always only doing exactly what they’re told. He then proceeded to ask her to go skiing. Roll those eyes and dive into this project of mother-daughter letters that shed light on life in college in the 1940s and provide glimpses into Doris Holmes Blake’s workflow at the U.S. National Museum. Tip: if you want to transcribe these letters in a fairly chronological order, start from the last page and work your way up! Funding for the digitization of Blake's correspondence, & its inclusion into the Transcription Center, was provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.

Read more

|
Show pages needing (scroll down to load more): Transcription | All

Completed!

Project Progress (details)
111 pages completed

38

Contributing
members

111

Total
pages