Jane Merchant (1919 - 1949)
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| Jane Merchant holding one of her books and at her typewriter |
Biographical Note: Jane Hess Merchant was born in 1919 on a dairy farm outside of Knoxville. She was the youngest of four children. Her family lived on farms in Knox County and Jefferson County until she, her mother, and her sister Elizabeth moved to Knoxville after her father's death in 1949. Jane was confined to her bed at age twelve due to the congenital bone disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which made her bones extremely brittle and thus prevented virtually all physical activity. Indeed, what little of the outside world Jane saw was from her parents' arms when they carried her outside as a child. The same disease that confined Jane to her bed also caused her to go deaf at the age of twenty-three. She lived with her mother and sister Elizabeth, who cared for her until her death. Although many people may have considered Jane to be hopelessly crippled and thus to be treated as an object of pity, she was extremely active in the literary world until her death on January 3, 1972. She wrote more than 3,000 poems, over 2,000 letters, dozens of prose pieces, and published ten collections of her poetry. Jane did not consider herself pitiful in any way: as the Reverend Gordon Sterchi put it at her funeral, "no one who knew Jane pitied her or thought her life dreary. They understood that her life was more joyful that their's [sic]. They realized that she saw more from the bed than they saw from the boulevards."
Contact Information Hoskins Library1401 Cumberland Avenue Knoxville, TN 37996-4000865-974-4480e-mail: special@aztec.lib.utk.edu © The University of Tennessee Special Collections Library Linear Feet: This collection occupies one file folder of shelf space and contains 7 items.
Abstract:
This collection deals primarily with Jane Merchant's death, and
constitutes an addition to the Special Collections Library's existing
holdings dealing with her life and work. Administrative Information Statement of Provenance: The Special Collections Library purchased this collection in October of 2004. Copyright
statement: Copyright © 2001. The University of Tennessee Libraries. All
Rights Reserved. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute these
materials for educational, research, and not-for-profit purposes,
without fee and without a signed licensing agreement, is hereby granted,
provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph appear in
all copies, modifications, and distributions. For commercial license to
use contact, University of Tennessee Libraries, Office of the Dean,
Permissions, 1015 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN 37996-1000.
Born in 1916, Jane Hess Merchant was the author of more than 2,000 poems published throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The Saturday Evening Post alone published more than 100 of her poems. Among her most successful works was her book "The Greatest of These", judged the best book of poems by the National League of American PEN Women. Although best known for her religious poetry, Jane Hess Merchant also wrote about nature, family, and other subjects. Born with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle-bone disease), Jane had been confined to a bed since she was twelve years old. By age 23 she had become completely deaf at 30 she was nearly blind. When she died, she left a legacy of letters and unknown poems, many of which appear for the first time in this book "A Window on Eternity". Author Sarah Oftedal uses these pieces to help tell the inspiring story of Jane's life. The book also include a foreward by Ruth Bell Graham. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0687456029/103-6512050-9646250?v=glance&n=283155)
Scope and Content: This collection
constitutes an addition to the Jane Merchant Literary Manuscripts
Collection, 1954 - 1963 (MS 0333), and the Sarah Ricketts Collection of
Jane Merchant, 1937 - 1992 (MS 2057). This smaller collection is
composed primarily of materials related to Jane Merchant's death on
January 3, 1972, including an obituary, an announcement for her funeral,
and the text for a eulogy by the Reverend Gordon A. Sterchi. It also
contains two letters that Jane wrote, one of which contains a number of
details about her early life, and two photographs of Jane, one of which
pictures her with her mother and sister Elizabeth.
LCSHPoets,
American – Tennessee – Knoxville Merchant, Jane, 1919-1972 Authors,
American – Tennessee American literature – Women authors
KeywordsJane
MerchantElizabeth MerchantGordon A. SterchiJane Merchant Literary
Manuscripts Collection, 1954 – 1963MS 0333Sarah Ricketts Collection of
Jane Merchant, 1937 – 1992MS 2057
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