Cornelia Clarke Collection

Series

Cornelia Clarke Collection

• Circa 1900-2018 (Creation)

Quantity: One 12 x 13 buff box
One glass negative box
One 10 ½ x 12 blue-gray box

Barcodes: Box #1: 32661002078575
Box #2: 32661002078583
Box #3: 32661002107689

Background Note: Cornelia Clarke (1884-1936) was a well-known “nature photographer” from Grinnell, whose photographs appeared in national newspapers and publications. As a young girl, she learned her craft by taking photographs of her many cats—up to twelve at one time—according to her own account. She made clothes for them and posed them as she might pose her dolls: sitting at a table, sitting in a chair, standing at an ironing board, lying in a small bed, etc. According to Country Life in America, which published her “Peter and Polly” photographs in 1911 (see Folder #2, below), Cornelia took the pictures when she was sixteen years old, which would date them to 1900 (she would have been about 27 years old when they were published in Country Life in America in 1911). Seven of the photographs appearing in the magazine are from glass-plate negatives in this collection. Of the photographs appearing in colored versions in the book Peter and Polly (1912), those on pages 25, 75, 76, 84, and 94 are prints from the glass-plate negatives in this collection.

This collection contains a variety of items both from and about Cornelia Clarke.

Note: Digital Grinnell (https://digital.grinnell.edu/), through the library’s Poweshiek History Preservation Project, has made available various items from the collection, including a virtual copy of Peter and Polly and a number of Clarke’s photographs. PHPP’s scans are available as well through Drake Community Library’s staff documents; please ask an archivist for assistance for accessing these digital scans: Staff Docs -> Digital Archives -> Cornelia Clarke. Grinnell Historical Museum has also contributed scans of their Clarke items to Digital Grinnell.

On Saturday, November 6, 2021, Cornelia Clarke was inducted into Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame.

Donated by: Glass plate negatives from Grinnell Historical Museum.
Peter & Polly purchased by Drake Community Library, 2017.
Parade of the Animal Kingdom purchased by Drake Community Library, 2017.
Will, obituary, and Clarke biography, “Grinnell’s Beatrix Potter . . .” from Dan Kaiser (May, 2017).

View Cornelia Clarke's photographs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/shsi-library/sets/72157692441774530/

Read Peter and Polly: https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A18980#page/1/mode/2up

Name of Preparer: L. Cabelli
Date of Preparation: 06/27/17; 09/05/2017; 04/03/2018; 03/22/2019; 09/03/2019