{"value"=>"<p>This series contains correspondence mainly between members of Louise Homer's family, with the greatest percentage between Louise and Sidney Homer and between the Homers and their daughter, Katharine Homer Fryer. Other family members represented include Samuel Barber (letters mostly between Barber and Sidney Homer), Louise Homer's mother Sarah Fulton Beatty, and small amounts of correspondence from the other Homer children and extended family. (For reference, see the Beatty and Homer family trees in box 34, folder 5).</p> <p>The Homers, as a family, were avid letter-writers. Louise and Sidney Homer wrote to each other often when they were courting and whenever they were apart during their marriage, such as when Louise was on tour. The letters to and from Katharine Homer Fryer span her whole life, beginning with her boarding school days and ending with letters in the 1980s-1990s. Her correspondents at that time included Jeffrey Miller and Edwin Pearson, friends and opera scholars with whom she discussed her mother and her times, as well as discographical issues and the remastering of her mother's recordings. Fryer also discussed the recordings with Tom Owen, a former engineer at the Rogers and Hammerstein division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Other letters are between Louise Homer and her mother and sisters, and between Sidney Homer's older sister and the Homers.</p> <p>After her children grew up Louise Homer took to using a typewriter and carbon paper to create group letters to all her children (see box 20, folder 15), although she continued to write separate letters to Katharine, at least. Regarding business, there is correspondence from the Metropolitan Opera and from the Victor Company (later RCA).</p> <p>Though the series is mainly arranged alphabetically by writer, several special categories of letters to and from Louise Homer appear in box 21. European correspondence, some in French, documents her early career in France, Belgium and London. Several folders of fan letters mainly resulted from two radio appearances, which brought Homer more exposure than she had ever had before, and one folder contains letters in which Homer discussed her recordings and the process of making them.</p>"}