Scope and arrangement
The May Sarton letters and poems date from 1932 through 1985, with most materials from 1939 through 1960. The collection contains newspaper clippings about Sarton, typewritten copies of her poems, correspondence with sisters Roswell ("Roz") and Margaret Hawley, and photographs of Sarton and her parents. The collection is loosely arranged by type: newspaper clippings, correspondence, Christmas poems, and typewritten poems. These groupings have been arranged chronologically.
From the 1930s until the mid-1960s, Sarton would write to her friend Roswell Hawley and later her sister Margaret Hawley. Sarton would describe her personal and professional life and often included a typewritten copy of one her poems in addition to her letter. Roswell Hawley was interested in writing, with Sarton often asking Hawley's opinion about current theatre and plays. Margaret Hawley was interested in the visual arts, and Sarton mentions her admiration for Margaret Hawley's paintings despite her distaste for modern visual art.
During her correspondence with the Hawley sisters, Sarton mentions several projects including publishing books and poems while also teaching or giving lectures throughout the United States. Their correspondence also covers different milestones in Sarton's life, including the death of both of Sarton's parents, meeting her partner Judy Matlack and their eventual breakup, and moving to a house in Nelson, New Hampshire in 1956.
The collection includes two photographs. One is inscribed to Roswell Hawley showing May Sarton in a field in Austria, holding a flower. The second is an undated photograph of her parents and cat sent to Roswell Hawley after the death of Sarton's father.
Sarton's letters also include several ideas for stories and plays, and give an incomplete chronology of some of the poems and pieces published during this time, including novels, plays, and stories submitted to magazines including Cosmopolitain, Today's Woman, The New Yorker, and Town and Country.
The collection also holds several poems that are undated, but likely from the 1940s. The poems include an untitled submission to Atlantic Monthly in March of 1940 and "The Scholar Mourns," published in Nature in June 1940. Several other poems are in the collection, including "Airman's Mother," "Villanelle," "This Gift of Passion," "Out of a Desolate Source," and "These Images Remain."
In addition to her personal correspondence with the Hawley sisters, Sarton would send an annual card with a New Year's or Christmas poem. The Christmas poems in this collection date from 1941 through 1963. Sarton explored themes of the global impact of World War II, her experiences living in New Mexico with her partner, friendship, and later living alone in a home in Nelson, New Hampshire. In 1963 the annual poem included a note stating that the Christmas poems' mailing list had grown to be almost eight hundred recipients, and she would be scaling back the mailings.
The clippings in this collection include two articles detailing some of her professional accomplishments of Sarton in the 1940s and 1985. The other clippings include poems originally published in Atlantic Monthly, Lyric, and Voices, then reprinted in local newspapers.