MC 147

27 Boxes (8.25 cubic ft.)

About Elizabeth Knowlton

Elizabeth Knowlton, mountaineer and writer, consistently found her voice in climbing. She was born October 23, 1895 in Springfield, Massachusetts to Marcus Perrin Knowlton, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of that state, and Rose Ladd Knowlton of Portland, Maine. A graduate of Vassar (A.B. 1916) and Radcliffe (M.A. 1917), Knowlton began climbing in the White Mountains at age seven. The endeavor which proved central to her life and work was her attempt on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan (Kashmir) with the other eight members of the German American Himalayan Expedition in 1932. Described by the Portland Press Herald as “a painter who will `mother’ the expedition,” Knowlton later countered, “I lived for over a month in a tent in the snow high upon the mountain–at over 20,000 feet.” She was one of the first women ever to reach that elevation (the first was Fanny Bullock-Workman, who made two ascents of over 22,000 feet in the Himalayas in the early 20th century) and reported back weekly to major papers in Europe and the U.S. on the expedition’s progress.

Knowlton considered herself more freelance writer than journalist, but her best writing is informed by a journalistic urge for clarity. Her continuing grief over the accidental death in 1932 of Rand Herron, the only other American on the GAHE, is manifest. She never married, but among her correspondents are a goddaughter–Caroline Herron, daughter of Rand Herron’s brother Davis–and a nephew by her brother Marcus P. Knowlton, also Marcus. Tirelessly pursuing both publication and intellectual discourse on salient issues of the day, Elizabeth Knowlton continued to hike the foothills when too old to climb. She died in Scituate, MA aged 93.

Knowlton’s two known published books are her story of the GAHE, The Naked Mountain, and a volume of poems, Grief is a Lonely Journey (New York: Comet Press Books, 1952). Also published were many of her articles about mountaineering, travel and culture. The fiftieth anniversary of her Nanga Parbat climb found Knowlton deep in a comprehensive chronological account of attempts on the mountain, a project which she never finished.

About the Elizabeth Knowlton collection

The Knowlton collection consists of correspondence, verse and prose manuscripts, published material, diaries, notes, clippings, ephemera and photographs. Among the unpublished works of fiction present in the papers are the climbing novel Avalanche Wind (variously titled This Nettle Danger, Here Living Starts, Wind Between the Worlds, and Ramiwari); a spy novel, Condors’ Prey, and Anne Wilson (Suburbia, Summits and Stars, Introduction to Adventure: A Wife Writes), a psychological novel about the wife of an astronaut. Some of Knowlton’s most poignant verse is in Box 25, f.16: a sequence devoted to Rand Herron shortly after his death.

Related works: Herrligkoffer, Karl M. Nanga Parbat. London: Elek Books, 1954 and Hermann Buhl, Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage.

A Note on the Collection

Wherever possible, verse manuscripts have been arranged chronologically by approximate date of first draft. A prior study of the correspondence will help direct the scholar of Knowlton’s verse and short nonfiction. Longer fiction suffers a pre/post World War II split, and “crossdrafts” make dating difficult. Some explanation of the manuscripts’ confused condition is found in Knowlton’s claim (Box 9, f.16) that they were vandalized–mixed up and sections stolen–in the 1970s. Over the years her method of composition evolved from drafting large portions all at once, with few corrections, to arranging nests of fragments and inserts that were apparently reviewed by other members of writing classes in Cambridge–typewritten “hypertext” held together with straight pins. The curious will want to decipher Knowlton’s early diary entries and letters, passages of which are written in code.