MANUSCRIPT: 20 signed typescripts.
INSCRIBED TO A CANADIAN ACTRESS
BY A CATHOLIC EDUCATOR OF WOMEN
Madeleva, Sister Mary. Typescript Poems. n.d. (ca. early 1930s). In a specially made cloth slipcase.
20 typescript poems (17 single-page poems, and three 2-page poems, titled “Ballad of the Happy Christmas Wind,” “Jail Bird,” and “I Will Remember Rehab”); each poem signed in ink by Madeleva. All of these poems were published in – and make up the bulk of – Madeleva’s A Question of Lovers (1935).
With a presentation leaf preceding the collection, inscribed in ink by Madeleva to the Canadian actress Margaret Anglin: To Margeret Anglin from Sister M. Madeleva./These verses have all appeared in magazines here or in England, but as yet are untrammeled by a publisher. Anglin attended Catholic convent schools as a child, and went on to become a leading stage actress of Greek tragedies and Shakespearean plays.
Sister Mary Madeleva (1887-1964), was born Mary Evaline in Wisconsin, the only girl and middle child of August and Lucy Wolff. She was one of seven graduates in her high school class; after graduating, she stayed at home for a year to assist her parents before attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After reading about St. Mary’s College in McClure’s Magazine, Madeleva applied and was accepted there. Her education at St. Mary’s broadened her intellectual and religious life; Madeleva began to have an interest in poetry, and as a senior she decided to enter the Congregation of the Holy Cross. She was given the name “Madeleva,” which is a combination of Magdalen and Eve. She went on to received her M.A. at St. Mary’s College.
Upon graduation, Madeleva taught at the Sacred Heart Academy in Ogden, Utah, where she further pursued her interest in poetry, and she also wrote plays for the students to perform. Later, she went on to earn her Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley; Madeleva was the first nun to receive a doctoral degree from that school. Her dissertation, Pearl: A Study in Spiritual Dryness, was published in 1925. In 1926, Madeleva was asked to establish a college, St. Mary-of-the-Wasatch, in Salt Lake City. She acted as dean and President. In 1933, after the Depression limited the number of incoming students, Madeleva applied for a sabbatical year at Oxford. When she returned the next year, she was named President of St. Mary’s College at Notre Dame, a position she held until 1961.
During her tenure at Notre Dame, Madeleva brought key reforms to the school. Her most lasting legacy was establishing the School of Sacred Theology, which was the first school to offer women graduate degrees in theology. She also made other changes: relaxing some of the convent-like rules; updating curriculum, like starting a 5-year nursing program and introducing another called the Christian Culture Program; bringing in compelling theological speakers; and admitting black students. She also was integral in updating and expanding the library.
Madeleva was a Chaucer scholar and the President of the Catholic Poetry Society of America from 1942-1947. She wrote over two dozen books of essays and poetry, including Knights Errant and Other Poems (1923), Chaucer’s Nuns and Other Essays (1925), Songs of the Rood: A Century of Verse (1940), Four Giels, and Other Poems (1941), Addressed to Youth (1944), The Education of Sister Lucy: A Symposium on Teach Education and Teacher Training (1949), A Lost Language, and Other Essays on Chaucer (1951), and an autobiography, My First Seventy Years (1959). She received honorary degrees from Notre Dame and Indiana University.
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