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This addition to MSS 214, Amélie Rives papers, contains correspondence and literary papers documenting the friendship between Virginia Moore, a poet, biographer, and scholar, and Princess Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy, a novelist, poet, and playwright. Both were prominent literary figures residing in Albemarle County, Virginia, in the early and middle twentieth century, when these letters were authored. The letters date from 1930 to 1945, terminating the year of Rives's death. Much of the collection consists of approximately seventy-seven autograph letters signed from Amelie Rives to Virginia Moore, dating from 1934 to 1945, averaging two to four pages in length. Also included are twenty-three autograph letters from Moore to Rives at Castle Hill, one of which (December 2, 1941) contains a page of holographic poetry. Additional correspondence includes eighteen letters from Frances Shepard of Afton, Virginia, an associate of Rives who worked for her, addressed to Moore, spanning 1938 to 1944. A letter dated July 15, 1945, from Shepard describes Rives's final days and her death. Further correspondence consists of three typed letters signed by Elizabeth Winslow; two typed letters from Max Eastman, a poet, writer, and political activist; letters from Roberta Wellford, a Charlottesville reformer and suffragist; topics also include the death of Pierre Troubetzkoy; and three autograph letters from Lily Morrill, a writer and the owner of Enniscorthy in Albemarle County as well as a list of Rives's books and publications. The collection also contains two typescripts, dated 1983, with corrections, of Virginia Moore's biography and memoir of Amelie Rives.
This collection has been minimally processed and is open for research.
This collection was purchased from Franklin Gilliam Rare Books by the Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia on 18 February 2026.
MSS 214, Amélie Rives papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.
Virginia Moore was born on July 6, 1903, in Chase City, Virginia, and was educated at Randolph-Macon Woman's College and, later, at Columbia University. She came to prominence first as a poet, publishing several collections including Not Poppy (1926) and Sweet Water and Bitter (1933), whose lyric qualities earned favorable critical attention. Her interests broadened substantially over the course of her career to encompass biography and literary scholarship, and she became best known for her full-length biographical and critical studies of major literary figures. Her biography Virginia Woolf (1945) was among the earliest book-length treatments of Woolf in the United States and contributed significantly to the American critical reception of that writer. She also wrote Distinguished Women Writers (1934), a survey of women's literary achievement, and The Unicorn: William Butler Yeats' Search for Reality (1954), a critical biography of Yeats that drew on extensive research into his esoteric and philosophical sources. Moore spent much of her academic career at the University of Virginia, where she taught in the English department, and her connection to the University and to Virginia's literary culture informed much of her work. She died on June 16, 1993.
References
"Moore, Virginia (1903–1993)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities. Last modified December 22, 2021. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/moore-virginia-1903-1993/.
"Virginia Moore." Cvillepedia. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://cvillepedia.org/Virginia_Moore.
Norris, Michele. "Striving for 'Ultimates.'" Virginia Living, June 23, 2016. http://www.virginialiving.com/culture/striving--for-ultimates/.
"Moore, Virginia, 1903–1993." Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC). Accessed April 20, 2026. https://snaccooperative.org/view/48176921.
"Moore, Virginia, 1903–1993." Archives Search. Cambridge University Library. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/agents/people/12058.