Collections : [University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept.]

This addition to MSS 214, Amélie Rives papers, contains correspondence and literary papers documenting the friendship between Virginia Moore, a poet, biographer, and scholar, and Princess Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy, a novelist, poet, and playwright. Both were prominent literary figures residing in Albemarle County, Virginia, in the early and middle twentieth century, when these letters were authored. The letters date from 1930 to 1945, terminating the year of Rives's death. Much of the collection consists of approximately seventy-seven autograph letters signed from Amelie Rives to Virginia Moore, dating from 1934 to 1945, averaging two to four pages in length. Also included are twenty-three autograph letters from Moore to Rives at Castle Hill, one of which (December 2, 1941) contains a page of holographic poetry. Additional correspondence includes eighteen letters from Frances Shepard of Afton, Virginia, an associate of Rives who worked for her, addressed to Moore, spanning 1938 to 1944. A letter dated July 15, 1945, from Shepard describes Rives's final days and her death. Further correspondence consists of three typed letters signed by Elizabeth Winslow; two typed letters from Max Eastman, a poet, writer, and political activist; letters from Roberta Wellford, a Charlottesville reformer and suffragist; topics also include the death of Pierre Troubetzkoy; and three autograph letters from Lily Morrill, a writer and the owner of Enniscorthy in Albemarle County as well as a list of Rives's books and publications. The collection also contains two typescripts, dated 1983, with corrections, of Virginia Moore's biography and memoir of Amelie Rives.