Spence, Clara B. (1859-1923)
Spence School for Girls Commencement Album.

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1916.

Quarto-format commercially produced school graduation autograph album, originally compiled by Georgiana Drummond upon her graduation and signed by the school's founder, its teachers, and Drummond's classmates, including Margaret Carnegie Miller (1897-1990), daughter of Andrew Carnegie, with clippings, tipped in black-and-white photographs, handwritten poems, essays, speeches; typed material including a whimsical "Class Prophecy," and other related ephemera including invitations to various commencement events; bound in full gilt stamped and blind ruled morocco with marbled endpapers (front hinge cracked, spine sunned); 8 ½ x 6 1/8 in.

Clara B. Spence founded the elite private Spence School for Girls in 1892 with the goal of establishing a place, "not of mechanical instruction, but a school of character where the common requisites for all have been human feeling, a sense of humor, and the spirit of intellectual and moral adventure." It is still in operation today. Many famous women have spoken at the school, including Edith Wharton and Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan, as well as notable instructors like Isadora Duncan. Among its alumni are Edith Bouvier Beale, Madeleine Astor, Eleanor A. Campbell, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Spence and her partner, Charlotte S. Baker, shared a lifelong relationship which included adopted children. Spence established the adoption agency herself, and it too is still in operation today. Baker and Spence were one of the first same-sex couples to adopt and raise a family. Together, they raised four children.

Condition
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Devon Eastland, Senior Specialist: deastland@swanngalleries.com
Grace Meschery-McCormack, Cataloguer: gmccormack@swanngalleries.com