Kathleen Foster Campbell, born Kathleen Foster, attended the University of Chicago to study poetry. Campbell was one of the early members of the Poetry Club, a group formed in 1917 by students who wished to address the absence of modern poetry in the University curriculum. Other members included Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Arthur Yvor Winters, Llewellyn Jones, Gladys Campbell, Maurice Lesemann, and Janet Lewis. Harriet Monroe, the founder and editor of Poetry Magazine, visited the group often. In 1918, Campbell taught a poetry course formerly directed by Edith Foster Flint. After graduating from the University, Campbell maintained a relationship with the members of the club and the University. Through the Poetry Club, Campbell became a close friend of Janet Lewis and Elizabeth Madox Roberts and eventually married Donald Campbell, an attorney and the brother of fellow writer and Poetry Club member Gladys Campbell. The couple lived in Chicago until Donald Campbell's retirement, when they moved to Carmel, California.
Janet Lewis (1899-1998) was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended the University of Chicago and was an active member of the University of Chicago Poetry Club alongside Kathleen Foster Campbell. Lewis suffered from tuberculosis for several years, leaving Chicago around 1921 to live at the Sunmount Sanatarium in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was very ill for two years and did not fully recover until 1930. In 1926, Lewis married American poet and critic Arthur Yvor Winters (commonly known as Yvor Winters), who also suffered from tuberculosis and left the University of Chicago during his freshman year to receive care at Sunmount Sanatarium. Neither Winters nor Lewis returned to Chicago and instead settled near Stanford University, where they both taught. Lewis and Winters edited the literary magazine Gyroscope from 1929 to 1931. Janet Lewis wrote poetry and novels but also collaborated with Alva Henderson, a composer for whom she wrote three libretti and several song texts.
From the guide to the Kathleen Foster Campbell papers, 1924-1992, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
