Susy Clemens

Description

This is a collection of letters written by Susan "Susy" Olivia Clemens (1872-1896), daughter of Samuel Clemens to her college friend Louise Brownell (1870-1961). Louise was later married to Arthur Percy Saunders (1869-1953), professor of chemistry and dean of Hamilton College.

Background

Susy Clemens was a daughter of Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain). She was born on March 19, 1872 in Elmira, New York and at the age of 13 she wrote a biography of her famous father. This is a collection of letters she wrote to her friend and Bryn Mawr classmate Louise Sheffield Brownell from various places in Europe from April 1891 to November 1893 and one from the summer of 1894. She died of spinal meningitis at the age of 24 in Hartford, Connecticut on August 18, 1896. After graduation from Bryn Mawr, Louise Brownell taught English at Cornell University where she met and was married to Arthur Percy Saunders. Arthur Saunders became a professor at Hamilton College where he taught Chemistry from 1900-1939. The Clemens/Brownell letters are just one part of the Saunders Papers held by the Hamilton College Archives.

Digitization

Digitization of the letters was done in-house on a flatbed scanner at 600 dpi, 24-bit color and saved as uncompressed TIF images. No transcripts have been made of these letters, but proper nouns have been extracted and are searchable.

Online

• Index of the Susy Clemens Letters
  From the Web site "The Mark Twain Papers & Projects" (The Bancroft Library in collaboration with the University of California Press)

• Books online by Susy Clemens (books.google.com)

• Susy Clemens (Wikipedia)

Print

• Papa, an intimate biography of Mark Twain, by Susy Clemens; edited by Charles Neider (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985) (held by Hamilton College - PS1331 .C49 1985)