1867 Autograph Letter Signed by Anna Eliot Ticknor, Author, Educator, Founder of America’s First Correspondence School.

The Ticknor Family in 1857 Naples, Italy

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A chatty four-page travel letter from Anna Eliot Ticknor (1823–1896), author and educator who founded the first correspondence school in America, writing to a Mrs. Parker, describing her travels through Italy and Germany. Ticknor is content, abroad in Naples, and is happy to receive letters from America that have “...brought us an extraordinary proportion of good news ... just now we have William Langdon with us who reports the news of your arrival in Shanghai.” Ticknor is enjoying her trip: “We have been in Rome for the last four months, fully occupied, constantly finding new interests, and obliged to unravel complications of ideas and contrasts of old and new, which one is long in getting used to…” Ticknor further describes her touring of Nuremberg and Dresden where she is impressed with the art galleries, a flourishing music scene, and Germany’s interpretation of Shakespeare. She finds Italy “more exiting and enchanting than anything in Germany can be but extremes meet too often here…” Ticknor further describes her impressions of Italy in detail; then writes of the “...necessity for getting back to our beloved native land.”

In 1873, Anna, erudite and polished, founded the Society to Encourage Studies at Home to which she thenceforth devoted herself until her death. She was the daughter of noted educator and author George Ticknor (1791–1871) who, along with her mother, were her traveling companions. George Ticknor was not only just abroad with his family to see the sights. The ANB notes George Ticknor’s help in establishing the Boston Public Library: “In June 1856 Ticknor went once more to Europe, armed with lists of needed purchases suggested by experts, and conferred for fourteen months with librarians and book dealers in England, Germany, Austria, France, and Italy….”

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