The Library of Congress announced October 26 that it has acquired the papers of poet/activist Edna St. Vincent Millay and diplomat Pamela Harriman.
The purchase of more than 20,000 items from the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society enriches LC's current collection of 625 manuscripts and unpublished diaries her sister Norma Millay Ellis began giving the library after Millay's death in 1950. Among the new additions is an essay she wrote protesting the death sentences of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
LC will also receive some 500,000 papers from the estate of U.S. Ambassador to France Pamela Harriman, who died in 1997, as well as adding some 29,000 items to its 300,000-item collection from her husband W. Averill Harriman's estate. Also the widow of Randolph Churchill (the son of Winston Churchill), she had been an international figure "since the opening days of World War II," Librarian of Congress James Billington noted.
Posted November 2, 1998.