Scholars will find rich a resource related to the Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Papers (YCAL MSS 3) in the Sergeant Family Papers in Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives Collection (MS 806).
The Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Papers papers contain correspondence, writings, subject files and personal papers documenting the personal life and writing career of Elizabeth ShepleySergeant and such subjects as the Taos writers colony, the Indian rights movement, popular psychology, and life in Paris during World War I. Major correspondents include Randolph Bourne, John Collier, Alyse Gregory, SidneyHoward, Haniel Long, Amy Lowell, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Thornton Wilder.
Letters to Sergeant’s father and other members of her family in the Sergeant Family Papers in Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives Collection are the only known contemporary record of the writer’s first mental breakdown and recovery (the experience is also described in notes for a memoir composed late in her life, which reside Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Papers – YCAL MSS 3). In this early period of her life, Sergeant was treated by Pierre Janet and others at the forefront of psychoanalysis in Europe; her letters home document aspects of her treatment.
Sergeant Family Papers include correspondence and other papers related to several members of the Sergeant family of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Major correspondents include George Sergeant (1822-), of Northampton, Massachusetts; his sister, Catharine Sedgwick Sergeant De Forest, married to Dr. Henry A. De Forest; and his daughter, Catharine De Forest Sergeant (1848-). The collection contains correspondence on female education in Syria and education of women in the United States. Later letters, mainly in the 1870s, describe the experiences of women as students and as teachers in Princeton, New Jersey, Chicago, West Haven, Connecticut and elsewhere. Also includes family photographs and daguerreotypes.
Materials in the Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Papers and the Sergeant Family Papers will be of interest to historians of psychiatry and medicine, scholars studying the education of American women in early 20th century, Americans abroad in the period, women’s work in WWI, and related topics.
Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Papers YCAL MSS 3
Image: Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant to Charles Sergeant, MS 806 Box 4