Listen to co-curator Philip Palmer summarize Belle Greene’s educational career and actor Andi Bohs read Belle da Costa Greene’s earliest surviving letter.
Belle Greene left Northfield Seminary in 1898 without a degree, which was common for many of the school’s students at this time. In 1900 she attended the Summer School of Library Economy at Amherst College, about twenty-five miles south of Northfield. There she also learned the upright cursive handwriting she later used in her research notes and catalogue cards at the Morgan. This group photograph contains the earliest known image of Belle Greene, taken when she was twenty years old. She can be seen in the back row, against the ivy, with a wry smile and knowing expression. Like the other sitters, she signed the back of the photograph, where she recorded her name and hometown as “Belle Marion Greene, New York City.”
Amherst College Summer School, Fletcher Course in Library Economy, Class of 1900, 1900
Gelatin silver print
Amherst College Archives
PHILIP: Belle Greene wrote her earliest surviving letter just before starting boarding school at the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1896. Here she writes to Evelyn S. Hall of Northfield in late August 1896, promising to be at school and ready for class the following month.
ANDI: My dear Miss Hall: Yours of the 25th at hand. I fully expect to be present on the ninth of September. Shall send my baggage to East Hall as you direct.
Mother will have to leave home on the third or fourth of September for a short vacation as she is completely run down. She wishes to know if she may send my baggage on the third or fourth, direct to East Hall, E. Northfield, as she does not feel able to pay unnecessary expressage etc. to the country, & then to Northfield. She will be very glad indeed if it is possible to send my trunk direct to the Seminary. Will you kindly send us a line at the earliest opportunity?
Very sincerely,
B. Marion Greene
Thursday Evening August the twenty seventh
PHILIP: After Belle Greene left Northfield in 1898 she attended a summer library school course at Amherst College, where the earliest known photograph of her was taken. It is fitting that this photograph, only discovered in January 2023, is the earliest image of Greene and shows her in library school, training to pursue her life’s work.