Virginia Chase papers, 1910-1987
Collection Scope and Content
This collection includes correspondence with both Dorothy Healy and Grace Dow as well as with others; typescripts of Virginia Chase Perkins’ novel, This American House and other publications; interviews, clippings and reviews of her work in publications such as Down East and Yankee, including a representative collection of her short stories from the 1930s into the 1980s. There is also ephemera collected from various speaking engagements and tributes and a few photographs. The five scrapbooks in the collection give a sense of her impact on the literary scene of the time; they are full of newspaper clippings and publishers’ correspondence relating to her work.
Biographical/Historical Note
Educator, novelist, and popular historian, Virginia Chase (Perkins) was born in 1902 in Blue Hill, Maine, the younger sister of author Mary Ellen Chase. Chase received her degrees from the University of Minnesota and Wayne State University, and taught for many years, including more than 20 years at Hartford College for Women. Chase wrote articles and short stories throughout her life for publications such as Good Housekeeping and Down East. Her novels include The American House (1944), Discovery (1948), The End of the Week (1953), and One Crow Two Crow (1971). She also published works of nonfiction including The Writing of Modern Prose. In 1940 Chase received the Avery Hopwood Award for fiction. She was posthumously inducted into Westbrook College’s Deborah Morton Society in 1983.