Additional papers of Ruth Elspeth Raymond, 1922-1976

Ruth Elspeth Raymond, writer, was born November 5, 1909 in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Percy and Grace (Goodenough) Raymond. As early as 1924, when she was a student at Lexington (Massachusetts) High School, Raymond had written a collection of plays and a number of short stories; by 1928 she had completed a longer work, No Crystal Stair. In that year she also traveled to Canada, England, and Scotland, returning to enter Mount Holyoke College, where two of her stories were published in a campus periodical, The Mount Holyoke. She transferred to Radcliffe in 1929, but stayed only a year. In 1933, with a letter of recommendation from Ada Comstock, Raymond again traveled to England and Scotland to do research for a historical work, The Duke of Perth, and resided there for a few weeks. After returning to the United States, Raymond resumed her college education at the Harvard Extension School, finishing in 1943. In later years she devoted herself to library work: from 1949 to 1963 she worked at Treadwell Library at Massachusetts General Hospital, and from 1963 until her retirement in 1974 at Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School. Raymond died January 28, 1979.