Letter from Edith B. Lehman, 1897-03-[01], Wellesley, Mass. to Carrie A. Lehman, Cleveland, Ohio, 1897-03-[01]

This collection is largely composed of correspondence between Edith B. Lehman and her mother, Carrie A. Lehman during Edith’s education at Wellesley College from 1896 to 1900. In her letters home, Edith details her life at Wellesley, including descriptions of her classes and exams, social activities with friends, and events, such as lectures, performances, and sermons which she has attended. She is active in many student groups and often writes about her Shakespeare Society meetings and involvement with the college magazine. Edith also recounts her visits with friends and family, particularly her outings both in Wellesley and Boston with the boys from home who are attending college in the area. She occasionally addresses more serious topics, for example, her thoughts on anti-semitism and her experience with religion at school, as well as her struggle with the dichotomy between her life at Wellesley and the society life she will enter when she returns home. Edith constantly worries about her budget and spending and frequently asks her mother about purchases and requests her advice on updating her wardrobe. The collection also includes a small set of letters that Edith sent home from an 1893 trip to Chicago to visit with family and see the World’s Fair, which detail her visits to many of the exhibition buildings and country pavilions; a letter from a trip to Germany; and a collection of speeches and newspaper clippings from her high school graduation. Typewritten transcriptions of the letters were created at some point by the family, and they are included in this collection. Many of the letters that were not written by Edith do not have transcriptions available, and in a few cases, transcriptions exist for letters that have since gone missing. Four of the missing letters are from August of 1893 (3 postcards from 8/1, 8/3, and 8/9 and a letter from 8/8), and the fifth is undated, but believed to be from 1898.