Curtiss, Mina Kirstein, 1896-1985

Mina Stein Curtiss was born on October 13, 1896, in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Smith College in 1918, received a M.A. in English from Columbia University in 1920, and returned to Smith, where she was an associate professor until 1934. She was a research assistant for the Mercury Theater from 1935 to 1938, and she worked for the Office of War Information during World War II. She taught at Smith from 1940 to 1941. In 1942, Curtiss wrote and produced a local radio program in Des Moines, Iowa, in which she featured Iowa soldiers' letters home, and interviews with their families. The response inspired her to expand the project and incorporate letters of servicemen from all over the country, and in 1944 she published an anthology of enlisted men's Letters Home . During the next decades, Curtiss spent much time in France, and later Russia. She was the author of many publications, and received the Legion of Honor from the French government for her books on Marcel Proust and Georges Bizet. She married Henry ("Harry") Tomlinson Curtiss on June 1, 1926.

Smith College, Class of 1918. Columbia University, M.A., 1920. Smith College Professor, English, 1920-1934. Died Oct. 31, 1985.

Mina Stein Kirstein Curtiss (1896-1985) author, translator and teacher wrote Letters Home (1944), Letters of Marcel Proust (1949), Bizet and His World (1958) and three other books.

Professor of English; author; translator.

Mina Curtiss at Chapelbrook, Ashfield, Massachusetts, n.d.

Mina Kirstein Curtiss was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 13, 1896 to Louis Kirstein, an optician, and Rose Stein. She had two younger brothers, Lincoln Kirstein, founder and general director of the New York City Ballet, and George Kirstein, publisher of the Liberal Weekly. The family moved to Rochester, NY in 1901 and remained there until 1912, when they returned to Boston and Louis Kirstein became a partner in Filene's Department Store. Curtiss was schooled at home by a governess until 1912, when she was sent to Northampton, Massachusetts to attend Miss Capen's School. She graduated from Smith College in 1918 and went on to earn an MA in English from Columbia University in 1920.

Prior to attending Columbia, Curtiss worked as a research clerk for Military Intelligence in Washington, D.C., from 1918 to 1920. She lived at the headquarters of the National Woman Suffrage Association where she became friends with Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt. Curtiss married Henry Tomlinson Curtiss in 1926 only to be devastated by his untimely death a year later, in 1927. In 1933 she published The Midst of Life, a book that took the form of a series of letters to her dead husband. From 1922 to 1934 and again from 1940 to 1942, Curtiss was a beloved and highly regarded professor of English at Smith College, returning in 1976, at the age of 81, as Visiting Professor of English Language and Literature to teach a course on writing biography. From 1935 to 1939, she worked with Orson Welles and John Houseman in researching and writing scripts for the Mercury Theatre of the Air. In 1942, she created a program for the Des Moines Register and Tribune radio station, based on soldiers' letters home. This evolved into a book, Letters Home, edited by Curtiss and published in 1944. In 1942 Curtiss also joined the Office of War Information and, with Houseman, developed a short wave radio program for the BBC entitled "Answering You," in which celebrities responded to questions submitted by BBC listeners.

Rather than return to teaching when World War II ended, Curtiss opted to pursue a career in writing, authoring books, journal articles, and book reviews for national and international audiences. She was also fluent in French, and translated and edited works by several noted Frenchmen, including Edgar Degas, Philip Halevy, Marcel Proust, and Alexis Leger (also known as Saint-John Perse). She once said in an interview, "I fall in love with whatever I'm working on," and this passion, combined with a rigorous intellect, made her a tireless, tenacious, and meticulous researcher. Having read Proust and translated his letters for publication in the United States ( The Letters of Marcel Proust, 1949), Curtiss was inspired to go to Paris to seek out Proust's family and friends still living, and to unearth more of his correspondence. This research led to publication in 1978 of Other People's Letters: A Memoir and to an interest in the composer Georges Bizet, which Curtiss pursued with characteristic vigor.

Following publication of Other People's Letters: A Memoir in 1978, Curtiss continued to write. She submitted several manuscripts for publication ("Winter Letters," a sequel to Midst of Life ; "The Past and I" and "Slices of Life," sequential autobiographies; and "Plato: Archbishop of Moscow," a biographical sketch that evolved from researching A Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovich and Her Era, 1730-1740), and to her disappointment all were rejected. Despite a severe heart condition that left her bedridden for the last several years of her life, with the help of her secretary Curtiss continued to edit and modify the manuscripts in hopes that they would eventually go to press.

In addition to teaching and pursuing a career in writing, Curtiss was generous to causes in which she believed, to the extent that her finances allowed. In 1964, she donated most of the land that comprised Chapelbrook, her farm in Ashfield, Massachusetts, to the Trustees of Reservations, before selling the house and remaining acreage privately. She also founded the Chapelbrook Foundation the purpose of which was to provide funding to writers over the age of forty, to enable them to complete works in progress that might otherwise have gone unfinished. Curtiss also donated manuscript material to libraries and repositories, and works of art to museums.

In 1984, Smith College alumnae Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her sister, Constance Morrow Morgan, organized a campaign among Curtiss's former students to raise funds for a tribute to her. The response was overwhelming and led to establishment of the Mina Curtiss Fund, thanks to which a vase of fresh flowers, replaced on a regular basis in perpetuity, graces the Browsing Room in the William Allan Neilson Library at Smith College. Curtiss herself was an avid gardener and, not long before she died, suggested that the tribute take this form.

Mina Kirstein Curtiss died in Connecticut on October 31, 1985.

Mina Kirstein was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1896 and spent her childhood growing up in Rochester, New York, with her parents, Louis E Kirstein, a merchant, her mother Rose Stein and brothers Lincoln and George Kirstein. In 1912 the family returned to Boston where her father was the director of Filene's department store. Mina was educated at home and came to Smith College where in 1918 she received a B.A. In 1920 she was awarded the M.A. from Columbia University. She returned to Smith College to teach English and remained here until 1934. Between 1935 and 1938 she worked for the Mercury Theatre of the Air in New York City, with Orson Welles and John Houseman, as a researcher and promoter of the theatre. She continued to write throughout her career, publishing a book about her marriage and the early death of her husand Henry Tomlinson Curtiss in 1927 called The Midst of Life . She wrote several radio programs in the 1930s, translated Proust, and wrote a biography of Georges Bizet in the 1940s. A visit to Russia in 1962 resulted in a biography of the Russian ballerina Anna Ivanovna. In the 1970s she wrote Other People's Letters: A Memoir which chronicled her interest in Proust. She supplemented her craft of writing with book reviews and editorials for newspapers. She returned to teach at Smith College in the early 1940s, then again as a visiting lecturer, giving courses in the art of biography.

Mina Kirstein Curtiss was 89 years old when she died in Bridgeport, Connecticut on October 31, 1985 after a long illness. She lived a long and productive life, as is evidenced by her teaching and publications.

Henry Curtiss was born on April 19, 1888, in Stamford, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1910, where he was a member of the Scroll and Key Society. In October 1915 he married Esther Tomlinson. By 1917 Curtiss was assistant factory manager at A.G. Spaulding & Brothers in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and by 1926 he had become the head of golf ball manufacturing worldwide. The Curtisses divorced in 1925. Henry and second wife Mina Curtiss lived in Ashfield, Massachusetts until Henry's death on January 11, 1928.

Mina Stein Curtiss was born on October 13, 1896, in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Smith College in 1918, received a M.A. in English from Columbia University in 1920, and returned to Smith, where she was an associate professor until 1934. She was a research assistant for the Mercury Theater from 1935 to 1938, and she worked for the Office of War Information during World War II. She taught at Smith from 1940 to 1941. In 1942, Curtiss wrote and produced a local radio program in Des Moines, Iowa, in which she featured Iowa soldiers' letters home, and interviews with their families. The response inspired her to expand the project and incorporate letters of servicemen from all over the country, and in 1944 she published an anthology of enlisted men's Letters Home. During the next decades, Curtiss spent much time in France, and later Russia. She was the author of many publications, and received the Legion of Honor from the French government for her books on Marcel Proust and Georges Bizet. She married Henry ("Harry") Tomlinson Curtiss on June 1, 1926.

Mina Stein Kirstein Curtiss was born in 1896. Her brother was the choreographer Lincoln Kirstein. She was a professor of English at Smith College from 1920-1934, from 1940-1941, and in 1977. Her research talents appear to have been molded while she was a research assistant for the Mercury Theatre and the Mercury Theatre of the Air (1935-1938) and solidified during World War II when she worked for the Office of Information. During the war she published Letters Home -- a collection of letters from servicemen overseas (the working papers for this book are located at the Manuscripts and Archives section of Yale University Library).

Throughout her life Curtiss published books and articles. While doing research for a translation of letters by Marcel Proust (published in 1949), Curtiss discovered an unknown cache of letters to Proust from Geneviève Straus, widow of composer Georges Bizet (she was immortalized as one of the characters in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu ). This led her to undertake a biography of Georges Bizet as her next topic, publishing the book in 1958. She received the Legion of Honor from the French government for her books on Proust and Bizet.

Mina Curtiss continued to teach and publish for the remainder of her active career. She died in 1985.

Mina Kirstein Curtiss, author, editor, translator, and teacher was born in Boston on October 13, 1896. She received an A.B. degree from Smith College in 1918 and an A.M. from Columbia in 1920. She attained the rank of associate professor of English language and literature at Smith, where she taught from 1920 to 1933 and again from 1941 to 1944. In 1938 she was an instructor at the New School for Social Research.

In the 1930s Mrs. Curtiss collaborated with Orson Welles and John Houseman on scripts for the Mercury Theater of the Air in New York City. During World War II she served on Houseman's staff at the Office of War Information and edited a collection of letters from enlisted men and noncomissioned officers, Letters Home (1944).

Her published works include Olive, Cypress and Palm: An Anthology of Love and Death (1930), The Midst of a Life: A Romance (1933), and Letters of Marcel Proust (1949). She also wrote Bizet and His World (1958) and in 1978 published Other People's Letters: A Memoir .

In 1928 Mina Kirstein married Harry Tomlinson Curtiss, who died a year later. She had two brothers, Lincoln and George Kirstein. She died November 5, 1985, near her home in Weston, Connecticut.