ANNA THERESA KITCHEL
1881 - 1959
From the moment when Anna Theresa Kitchel joined the English
Department at Vassar College she was a force in the classroom
and in the college community; she was a friend of students,
and of colleagues on both the teaching and the non-teaching
staff. Warm, open, frank, she immediately gave expression to
her vital interest in the people she encountered, whether
casually or professionally. One younger appointee to the faculty
recalls how, in the anxious hour of being interviewed, she was
introduced to Miss Kitchel, who emerged from a classroom to
meet her "with so warm a smile lighting her beautiful face that
all tension dropped." To this unfailing personal interest her
students responded enthusiastically, as they did to the sound
scholarship that came to vivid life in her classroom.
Honors here and elsewhere marked Miss Kitchel's career. She
was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Smith College, where she
majored in history, held several fellowships from the Univ-
ersity of Wisconsin, where she took her doctorate in literature,
and was the recipient of The Markham Travelling Fellowship to
work at the British Museum (1923-1924). At Vassar College in
1946 she became the first holder of The Henry Noble MacCracken
Chair of English Literature, established to honor our president-
emeritus at the time of his retirement.V These awards recognized
her distinction as a teacher at West Division High School in
Milwaukee, at the University of Wisconsin, and then at Vassar
College (1918-1948). They recognized also her scholarly studies.
Miss Kitchel's interests were steadily focused on the Romantic
period and the wealth of figures in Victorian England. She
brought an unusual richness of historical perspective to her
study of the Romantic Poets; and the course in which she taught
their works for many years — "English poetry from Blake to
Keats" - brought her students sharply up against the currents
of philosophy and history from which these poets were shaping
their verse. _
But, although Miss Kitchel taught many other periods and subjects
her abiding interest was with the Victorians and her special
research was always directed towards George Eliot. Her investi-
gation of George Eliot's career as writer, critic, and editor
led her to a study of the relationship between that author_and
George Lewes. She was the first scholar to show that George
Eliot's notebooks and diaries were an important source for
Victorian intellectual history. Her pioneer work was acknow-
ANNA THERESA KITCHEL (continued)
ledged by Professor Gordon Haight of Yale University when he
brought out the definitive edition of George Eliot's notebooks
and diaries. The material in her book George Lewes and George
Eliot is widely used by scholars working in the period. Her
further research in George Eliot led her to the publication in
1950 of Quarry for Middlemarch. In this work Miss Kitchel made
available the record of George Eliot's studies of Victorian
medical controversies which gives substance to the characteriza-
tion of Lydgate in the novel Middlemarch. Quarry for Middle-
march was published by the University of California press in
1950 with the aid of the Lucy M. Salmon Fund for Research. To
Victorian scholars,.consequently, Anna Kitchel's name is familiar
wherever the careers of George Eliot or George Lewes are mentioned.
Deeply interested in Miss Kitchel's senior seminar in Victorian
literature, many a Vassar alumna going on to graduate work was
encouraged to acquaint herself with the Victorians in an era when
such enthusiasm was far from fashionable. With her remarkable
capacity for understanding and drawing out people in her own
surroundings, Miss Kitchel had a special talent for making the
figures of her Victorian friends breathe life. Her depth as a
scholar endowed her gifts as a teacher. Keeping both of these
attributes humane was a vigilant common sense which did not seem
to fail her. It was always ready, not only for herself, but for
others.
Helen E. Sandison
Caroline G. Mercer
Susan J. Turner
Elizabeth A. Daniels, Chairman
XV - 193-194