Collection Guide

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Administrative Information

Access and Restrictions: This collection is open for research.

Digital Surrogates: Except where indicated, this document describes but does not reproduce the actual text, images and objects which make up this collection. Materials are available only in the Special Collections Department.

Copyright:  Please read The University of Iowa Libraries' statement on "Property Rights, Copyright Law, and Permissions to Use Unpublished Materials"

Use of Collections:  The University of Iowa Libraries supports access to the materials, published and unpublished, in its collections. Nonetheless, access to some items may be restricted by their fragile condition or by contractual agreement with donors, and it may not be possible at all times to provide appropriate machinery for reading, viewing or accessing non-paper-based materials. Please read our Use of Manuscripts Statement.

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Biographical Note

Cornelia Meigs was born at Rock Island, Illinois, in 1884. She grew up in a family where storytelling was second nature. In a paper in this collection she says, "Since my father's kindred had been, in long succession, officers in the army and navy and my mother's father and mother had been pioneers from Vermont to Illinois, stories current in our house made the settlement of the Middle West, the War of 1812, the brush with the Barbary pirates, and the Civil War as familiar as any events within the century."

She received a public school education before going to Bryn Mawr College, where she received her A.B. degree in 1908. She taught English in Davenport, Iowa, at St. Katherine's School until 1913. She taught in the English Department at Bryn Mawr from 1932 to 1950.

Meigs published her first book for children, The Kingdom of the Winding Road, in 1915. She wrote over thirty books for children. She sometimes wrote under the pseudonym of Adair Aldon. In 1927 she won the Beacon Hill Bookshelf Prize with The Trade Wind and in 1934 she won the Newberry Medal for Invincible Louisa, a biography of Loisa May Alcott, becoming the first Iowan to win that honor. In 1953 A Critical History of Children's Literature was published, for which Meigs served as editor, and she wrote some of the pieces as well. In addition to writing books for young people, Meigs also wrote short stories for magazines. She died in 1973.

C. Pummer and J. Roethler, August 2004

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Scope and Contents

This collection consists of Meigs' drafts and correspondence concerning her book The New Moon.

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Related Materials

Dartmouth College Library has 72 linear feet of Meig's manuscript material.

There is another manuscript collection for Meigs at the de Grummond Library at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

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Acquisition and Processing Information

These papers were given to the University of Iowa Libraries by Cornelia Meigs in 1949.

Guide posted to Internet: August 2004

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Inventory

Clippings

Correspondence, 1949

Manuscripts

The New Moon

Short story version for the Youth's Companion -- early title Silver Sixpences

First draft -- with revisions

Suggested passage for jacket illustration

Printer's typescript -- with revisions

Galley proofs -- with revisions

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