Scholarly Essays and Books is a complete bibliography of secondary writings on Woolson’s works.

The most recent research on Woolson is listed on New and Forthcoming Publications.

Founders’ Prizes

To encourage continued investigations of Woolson’s writing, the Woolson Society awards five Founders’ Prizes for scholarship, named in honor of the scholars who have done the most to promote her writings and the Society. Scholars whose article, book, or creative venture on Woolson was accepted for refereed publication during the last two years before a Woolson Society conference are elegible for monetary awards. A detailed description and list of recent honorees is available here.

Archives

There are several locations in the United States that hold Woolson’s books, her correspondence, and family records, particularly the Archives at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and the Claremont Historical Society in Claremont, New Hampshire. Scholars researching Woolson’s life and works may also wish to consult the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio, for her correspondence, the New York Public Library, the Manuscript collections at the Library of Congress, and local libraries and historical societies where Woolson lived, particularly Florida and North Carolina. Archives in Europe have not been thoroughly searched, particularly Italy.

The Claremont Historical Society bibliography remains the best source for books Woolson owned that were written in languages other than English, particularly French. A comparative literary study of Woolson’s work with nineteenth-century French literature has not been done, but one is needed to understand the political references she made, particularly to the French Revolution, Napoleon, and populist uprisings in France. Woolson’s books in Italian, particularly those with references to the Resorgimento, would be another promising comparative literature study.

Clare Benedict Collection of Constance Fenimore Woolson Memorabilia at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, contains many of Woolson’s books and some manuscripts. The lenghty descriptive catalog of the collection is available online at the Rollins Archives.

Although Woolson often noted her desire to return to Florida, she was unable to fulfill her wish.  To honor her desire and to create a worthy monument to the memory of her aunt, Woolson’s niece and executrix, Clare Benedict, gave Rollins College a building furnished with items from Woolson’s estate, including some of her books and manuscripts. Woolson House opened with ceremony on May 31, 1938, and Fred Lewis Pattee gave the dedicatory address.  It was Clare Benedict’s hope that Woolson House be used as a gathering place for aspiring and accomplished writers.

She endowed her generous gift with a fund to ensure its upkeep, but security was often lax and many of the documents, photographs, books, manuscripts, and tableware disappeared. In 1992, the Department of Archives and Special Collections removed what remained and stored it in the archival vault, and soon after Rollins College renovated Woolson House.  Woolson’s desk, which had fallen into disrepair, was restored through the generosity of Rollins alumna Carolyn VanBergen Rylander, Ph.D. and is now a showpiece in the Special Collections Room. 

Many books from Woolson’s library are available in the Archives, as are some of her manuscripts and selections from her Notebooks, previously published by Clare Benedict in Constance Fenimore Woolson (London 1932).  The manuscripts for “The Story of Hepzibah,” which was unpublished at the time of Woolson’s death, and the last page of Horace Chase were lost during the years when the collection was unsupervised.  Some of the Archive’s prized possessions are a set of caricatures drawn for “Plum” and titled “Visiting in Asheville,” and the manuscripts of Woolson’s fern poems, penciled in Chapman’s Flora of The Southern United States (New York, 1872). 

The Woolson materials are available to scholars by appointment only.  Interested persons should contact the Department of Archives and Special Collections, which is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.  The Woolson Collection is not available for interlibrary loan.