Edith Hamilton Day Program
Join us at the Southwest Harbor Public Library on Thursday, August 15th at 5:30 for a three-part presentation “Edith and Doris: History, Writing, and Photographs” about Edith Hamilton (1867-1963) and Doris Fielding Reid (1895-1973). There will be a slide presentation of Hamilton and Reid by local author/playwright Carolyn Gage, a discussion about Hamilton's writings and cultural significance by professors Judith Peller Hallett and Donald Lateiner, and a slideshow of generations of family photographs taken at their home on Seawall Point by Dorrit Castle, Doris Fielding Reid's great niece. Online viewing is available. Registration recommended.
Hamilton was a celebrated educator —headmistress of the all-female Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore from 1896-1922, and renowned author, best known for her books on ancient Greek and Roman literature and classical mythology. Reid, her life partner, was a pioneering female stockbroker. From 1922 onward, the two women spent their summers at their cottage on Seawall Point in Manset.
Carolyn Gage lives in Southwest Harbor and is the author of eighty-five plays, including “In McClintock’s Corn”, which was the National Runner up for the 2023 Jane Chambers Award, the top feminist play award in the US. The play was also read in Southwest Harbor last year.
Dorritt Castle, Edith Hamilton’s and Doris Fielding Reid’s great niece, met them in 1954 on her first trip to Seawall when she was 4 yrs.old. Her family traveled from their home in Ojai, California to Seawall almost every summer, frequently living with them in the Big House. Dorritt, named after Doris, became Dorrit when she was very young because of Charle Dickens’ "Little Dorrit”.
Judith Peller Hallett, Professor of Classics and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park, holds a BA in Latin from Wellesley College and an AM and PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard University. She has published widely in the areas of Latin language and literature; women, the family and sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity; and the study and reception of classics in the Anglophone world.
Donald Lateiner is the John Wright Professor of Greek language and literature Emeritus at Ohio Wesleyan University. His research includes Greek historiography, especially Herodotus, nonverbal behaviors in ancient literature, and the ancient novel, especially its emotional portraits. He also investigates the history of Classical scholars in America. He summers in a cottage in Deer Isle, Maine.
For questions or for more information, call the Library at 207-244-7065, visit www.swhplibrary.org, or email programs@swhplibrary.org. Register for the event at: https://swhplibrary.libcal.com/event/12348448
