Mount Holyoke College
Archives and Special Collections
Manuscript Register
Blake, Marion Elizabeth
Papers ca. 1913-1964
Manuscript Collection: MS 0721
1 box
Agency History/Biographical note:
Marion Elizabeth Blake was born on March 23, 1892 in New Britain, Connecticut to Arthur C. and Elizabeth Snow Blake. She attended New Haven High School and arrived at Mount Holyoke College in 1909, earning her B.A. in 1913 with majors in Greek and Latin. She earned her M.A.(1917) and her Ph.D.(1921) from Cornell University. Blake was a teacher at Wethersfield (Connecticut) High School, 1913-1917; an instructor of Latin and Greek at Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, 1921-1922; an assistant and associate professor of Greek and Latin at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1922-1928; an associate professor of Greek at Mount Holyoke College, 1929-1936; an associate professor of Art and Archaeology at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia, 1936; a Latin professor at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, 1937-1938; and a research associate on Roman Archaeology at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., 1938-1947. She then worked and lived in Rome, Italy as a researcher at the American Academy Library, where she studied Roman construction from 1947 to 1961. Blake died in Rome on September 11, 1961 at the age of seventy-three.
Scope and Content:
The Marion Elizabeth Blake Papers consist of correspondence; a travel diary; writings, including academic papers for her masters and Ph.D. degrees (Cornell University) and two published archaeological articles; biographical information; archaeological photographs and sketches; photographs of Blake, and photographs taken on a visit to Scandinavia in 1930. Of particular note are the letters she wrote to Cora L. Eastman, 1937-1961, discussing her life in Rome at the start of World War II and her research conducted in Roman construction at the American Academy in Rome, and her writings, all of which deal with Roman construction and archaeology, a topic which occupied a significant part of her life. The letters discuss people and events at the American Academy in Rome, social conditions, visits to the opera, events in the deDaehn family, with whom Blake boarded, travels in Italy, air raids in Sicily, bombings, wartime shortages and restrictions, Mussolini's power, and the Marshall Plan. Also of particular note is the travel diary from Blake's trip to Scandinavia in 1930, in which she documents the itinerary of her stops in Oslo, Norway, Stockholm, Sweden, Danzig, Poland, and Visby, Gotland, Sweden, and her thoughts on each destination along the trip.
Cite as: Marion Elizabeth Blake Papers, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, Mass.
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted
Series List:
Correspondence , 1937-1961 , 2 folders
Diary , 1930 , 1 folder
Writings , 1918-1948 , 5 folders
Biographical Information , 1918-1961, 1963, 1964 , 2 folders
Archaeological Material , 1920 , 1 folder
Photographs , ca 1913-ca 1962 , 2 folders
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