Ingalls, Jeremy, 1911-2000

Jeremy Ingalls (1911-2000), J1932, G1933, H1965, was a famous poet and scholar, authoring such books as The Metaphysical Sword and The Galilean Way. After leaving Tufts with a Masters in 1933, Ingalls taught high school until she was hired as Assistant Professor of American Literature at Western College in 1941. She remained at Western until 1947, when she was invited to act as resident poet at Rockford College in Illinois. During her tenure at Rockford, Ingalls served as Director of Asian Studies, Chairman of the Arts and the Division of Language and Literature, and Chairman of the Department of British and American Literature. Ingalls' work in poetry and Asian Studies earned her numerous awards, including the Yale Series Young Poets Award in 1941. She would also serve as Fulbright professor at Kobe College in Japan from 1957 to 1958, and remained in Japan in 1958 as a Rockefeller Foundation lecturer. Ingalls retired in 1980 in order to devote more time to her writing, including finishing the second two installments of her epic poem, "Tahl," which she began working on at Tufts. Ingalls died on March 16, 2000.

Jeremy Ingalls (1911-2000), poet and scholar of Chinese and English literature. The collection includes letters from writers, rough drafts and copies of Ingalls' poems, correspondence about her work, and notes for a lecture to writers.

Jeremy Ingalls was born Mildred Dodge Jeremy Ingalls in Massachusetts in 1911. She received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Tufts University and was a scholar of Chinese and English literature. She was for some years Resident Poet, Professor of Asian Studies, and later head of the English Department, at Rockford College. She later taught at Western College in Ohio.

In 1941 Ingalls' book of poems The Metaphysical Sword appeared in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, edited by Stephen Vincent Benet. Mr. Benet wrote in his preface of the poet's difference from most young poets in her writing about "spiritual experience."

In 1943 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on her long poem "The Thunder Saga of Tahl,” published in 1945 by Knopf. On December 1, 1932 she read her poetry in the Harriet Monroe Library. Ingalls also wrote books of prose: A Book of Legends (1941) and The Galilean Way (1945) and translated several Chinese titles.

Ingalls retired to Tucson, Arizona in the 1960s and died there in 2000.