Marcia Satterthwaite Collection of the papers of John and Helen Cournos

John Cournos (born in Russia as Johann Gregorovich Korshun) was a writer and translator of Russian and Jewish literature. His mother married Ber Cournos, when John was 3; the family emigrated to America in 1895. He spent many years in Europe and England, where he joined a group of imagist poets; after his trip to Russia in 1917, he became an anti-communist propagandist. He married Helen Kestner Satterthwaite, an American writer, who published under the names of Sybil Norton, John Hawk, and other pseudonyms. Together, they wrote historical books for children. Alfred W. Satterthwaite was Helen's son by her second marriage, raised by John and Helen. A Harvard graduate, he was a professor of English at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He wrote a biography of his step-father, and many essays on John Cournos' circle of European friends, poets and novelists. Marcia Satterthwaite, 1949-2020, was Helen's daughter and sister of Alfred. In 1971 she married Richard Allen Wertime. Born in York and raised in Haverford, she graduated from the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and Swarthmore College; she spent her career as a social worker serving impoverished families first in Chester and then in Trenton, PA.