Students, 1937-1980 and undated

This subseries contains letters between Porter and students, from elementary school children to doctoral candidates. Most of the students with individual listings also sent her papers they had written about her works; these papers are in Series IX. In some cases--Jean Thompson, Jean Campbell, and Edward Schwartz especially--Porter responded to their work with criticism or praise in her letters to them. In other cases, she marked comments on their papers only; see Series IX for these manuscripts. Not all of the students were working on papers, theses, or dissertations about Porter; Frank McShane was writing about Ford Madox Ford. There are other subjects covered here as well; Edward Schwartz was also working on a screenplay of "Noon Wine," and Vida Ann Vliet's correspondence includes a great deal of Porter family genealogical material that she sent Porter.

Most of the letters, however, are from students seeking basic biographical and bibliographic information, often as a specific classroom exercise to contact famous writers; Porter seldom answered these or answered them with a desperate plea that they use reference sources like Current Biography or Who's Who instead of writing her directly. These letters are arranged chronologically at the end of the alphabetical sequence.