Hooper, Frances M. (Frances Milliken), 1892-1986

The journalist and advertising executive Frances Milliken Hooper was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 18, 1892 to James K. and Mary E. Milliken Hooper. Her father was a grain merchant. The family resided on Greenwood Avenue in Evanston, Illinois.

After studying American literature at the University of Chicago for a year, Hooper attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1914 with a bachelor's degree in English. Mary Augusta Jordan, one of her most influential English professors, instilled in Hooper a lifelong appreciation of good writing. Hooper published six prose pieces and two poems in the Smith College Monthly between October 1912 and June 1914. Another mentor was Smith College librarian Josephine A. Clark who inspired Hooper to collect books. Book collecting remained a lifelong passion. An illustrated edition of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (New York, 1910), which was given to Hooper by Clark, is in the rare book collection at Smith College. Hooper's correspondence with her parents from 1912 to 1919 and her college photograph album are in the Smith College Archives.

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