White, Elizabeth Wade, 1906-1994.

Elizabeth Wade White (1906-1994) was an author, self taught scholar, amateur poet, and activist. Educated through the high school level in Middlebury, Connecticut, she later studied sculpture in Rome and New York. In the 1930s she moved to New York City, and supported Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal while participating in investigations of labor conditions in mining and industrial towns.

In the late 1930s White moved to Dorset, England – telling her family she was going to research Anne Bradstreet. She actually intended to meet up with Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner Valentine Ackland and participate with the American Friends Service Committee as a relief worker in Spain. She made several trips to Spain in 1937 and 1938, with her parents sending telegrams in increasing amounts asking her to return to the United States.

In late 1938 White suffered a nervous breakdown, and left Spain for Dorset where she spent Christmas with Ackland and Warner, eventually becoming Ackland's lover. She took her own house in Dorset and took in a Spanish refugee couple, Mr. and Mrs. B.M. Smith.

During the war she returned to the United States to live in New York City, volunteering for the Red Cross as an ambulance driver and raising awareness for Russian War Relief. In the fall of 1945, she moved to her grandmother's house in Middlebury, "The Patch" with the woman who would become her life partner, Evelyn Holahan.

At the close of the 1940s White and Holahan started "White & Holahan, Books," a used and rare book business run out of their home. During this time White was an active member of the Progressive Party, dabbled in Communism, and wrote many letters in support of Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign.

In 1950, without an undergraduate degree, White was accepted to Oxford University on the basis of research she had already completed on the poet Anne Bradstreet. She graduated in 1953 and published The Life of Anne Bradstreet: The Tenth Muse in 1971. After graduating from Oxford, White maintained a home both in Oxford and in Middlebury. Holahan died in 1985, and White remained at "The Patch" until the end of her life, maintaining her many close friendships through correspondence.

From the guide to the Elizabeth Wade White papers, 1901-1994, 1923-1976, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)