Katherine Canby Balderston (January 2, 1895,

Boise, Idaho Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown are ...

– November 21, 1979,

South Natick, Massachusetts Natick ( ) is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is near the center of the MetroWest region of Massachusetts, with a population of 37,006 at the 2020 census. west of Boston, Natick is part of the Greater Boston area. ...

) was an American scholar of 18th century English literature. A professor emerita at

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

, she was a winner of the

Rose Mary Crawshay Prize The Rose Mary Crawshay Prize is a literary prize for female scholars, inaugurated in 1888 by the British Academy. Description The prize, set up in 1888, is said by the British Academy to be the only UK literary prize specifically for female sch ...

in 1941.

Life

Katherine Canby Balderston was born in Boise, Idaho, one of four children. Her father, William Balderston, was an editor of the Boise Statesman, while her mother Stella would become the Idaho State Librarian. She graduated from

in 1916 with a bachelor's degree,

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

with a master's, and obtained her doctorate from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. She was a member of the Wellesley basketball team at the time of her graduation. Balderston researched

Oliver Goldsmith Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, dramatist and poet, who is best known for his novel ''The Vicar of Wakefield'' (1766), his pastoral poem ''The Deserted Village'' (1770), and his pl ...

's life and letters, uncovering previously unknown details about his relations with his family, as well as the creation of his play ''

She Stoops To Conquer ''She Stoops to Conquer'' is a comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, first performed in London in 1773. The play is a favourite for study by English literature and theatre classes in the English-speaking world. It is one of the few plays from the 18th ...

'' in ''The Collected Letters of Oliver Goldsmith'', which she edited and published in 1928. She established that the character of the father in ''

The Vicar of Wakefield ''The Vicar of Wakefield'', subtitled ''A Tale, Supposed to be written by Himself'', is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774). It was written from 1761 to 1762 and published in 1766. It was one of the most popular and wid ...

'', which was hitherto thought to be based on Goldsmith's own, was rather an idealised parent that he wished to have had; similarly, the idealised village of ''Sweet Auburn'', thought to have been his village in Ireland, was rather an English town that Goldsmith preferred to have grown up in. Balderston edited and published the ''

Thraliana The ''Thraliana'' was a diary kept by Hester Thrale and is part of the genre known as table talk. Although the work began as Thrale's diary focused on her experience with her family, it slowly changed focus to emphasise various anecdotes and sto ...

'', the diaries of

Hester Thrale Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (née Salusbury; later Piozzi; 27 January 1741 or 16 January 1740 – 2 May 1821),Contemporary records, which used the Julian calendar and the Annunciation Style of enumerating years, recorded her birth as 16 January ...

. One of her contentions (challenged by later scholars) was that Thrale had some sort of sadomasochistic hold over

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

. This book won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1941. In 1942, she was made Martha Hale Shackford professor of English literature at Wellesley, which she held till retirement. She died in a nursing home in South Natick, Massachusetts in 1979.

Selected works

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Balderston, Katherine Wellesley College alumni 1895 births 1979 deaths People from Boise, Idaho Wellesley College faculty Rose Mary Crawshay Prize winners Radcliffe College alumni Yale University alumni 20th-century American non-fiction writers American academics of English literature 20th-century American women writers