Elaine Self papers

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 6528

Scope and content

The collection includes 33 diaries which document her marriage to Robert M. Adams, her life as a faculty wife at Cornell, her second marriage to Peter Self and their subsequent life in England, her efforts to write fiction, and her psychological difficulties. Also, letters from the poet, Genevieve Taggard and her husband Kenneth Durand, and two letters from William Carlos Williams.

Dates

1949-1986.

Creator

Self, Elaine, 1921-1988. (Person)
Taggard, Genevieve (Date of work: 1894-1948..) (Person)
Durant, Kenneth. (Person)
Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963. (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Elaine Rosenbloom Adams Self was born in Middletown, Ohio in 1921. She attended Penn State University and graduated from Queens College. In 1944, she married Robert M. Krapp, who changed his name to Adams in 1946. They were divorced in 1958. She remarried Peter John Otter Self in 1960; they were divorced in 1982. She always wanted to be a writer, and late in life, she wrote a cookbook called A Passion for Garlic with her sister-in-law, Penny Drinkwater, and she edited with Rose Grant, a book titled Can You Speak English, about a program for teaching English to immigrant women. Elaine Self died in London on April 4, 1988.