Georgia Willis Read


Georgia Willis Read was an American editor, historian, writer, and weaver. She worked as an editor at Columbia University Press, and wrote and edited works on the American West.

Early life and education

Read was born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, the daughter of George Willis Read and Henrietta A. Miner Read. Her father was a physician. She attended Smith College, following her older sister Elizabeth Fisher Read.

Career

Read served in the Smith College Relief Unit in France during World War I. She worked at Columbia University Press, and wrote and edited books with her partner and fellow Smith alumna, Ruth Louise Gaines. In addition to their shared projects, she published Gaines's book, City Royal: A Memory of Kyoto, after Gaines's death in 1952. Read and Gaines became weavers in their later years. They grew flax for linen and bred Angora rabbits for wool, to use in their spinning, dyeing, and weaving according to traditional methods.

Personal life

Read and Ruth Gaines lived together on a 100-acre farm in Meriden, New Hampshire. They bought a house together in Frederick, Maryland, in 1948. Gaines died in 1952, and Read returned to Meriden the next year. She died in 1965, at the age of 84. They share a gravestone in New Hampshire. There is a large collection of their papers in the Huntington Library.

Publications

  • Médoc in the Moor
  • "Apiculture in the Time of Virgil"
  • The Village Shield: A Story of Mexico
  • A pioneer of 1850: George Willis Read, 1819-1880: the record of a journey overland from Independence, Missouri to Hangtown, California
  • "The Chagres River Route to California in 1851"
  • "Diseases, Drugs, and Doctors on the California-Oregon Trail in the Gold Rush Years"
  • "Women and Children on the California-Oregon Trail in the Gold Rush Years"
  • Gold Rush: The journals, drawings, and other papers of J. Goldsborough Bruff
  • "Bruff's Route in Eastern California"