Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) was an American poet and songwriter. She is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem "America the Beautiful". She popularized "Mrs. Santa Claus" through her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride (1889).

Life
Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the daughter of a Congregational church|Congregational pastor. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1880, and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley. While teaching there, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics, which she had also studied.

She visited Colorado in 1893 and went up Pike's Peak. The vision from the top of the mountain inspired her to write "America the Beautiful. The poem was published in 1895 in the Congregationalist, and a revised (simplified) version in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1904.

Bates lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College school Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915. It is debated whether their relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain or platonic (sometimes called a "Boston marriage") as the local historical society of her birthplace maintains. In the years following Coman's death, Bates wrote Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, to Katharine Coman. Almost all the poems there contained refer to the relationship between Bates and Coman.

She helped found the New England Poetry Club in 1915, and served for a time as its president. Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1929, aged 69, and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery at Falmouth.

America the Beautiful
The first draft of "America the Beautiful" was hastily jotted down in a notebook during the summer of 1893, which Bates spent teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Later she reminisced: "One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."

The words to her only famous poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 19, 1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913.

The hymn has been sung to several tunes, but the familiar one used by Ray Charles is by Samuel A. Ward (1847–1903), written for his hymn "Materna" (1882).

Other writings


Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel literature, and children's books. She popularized Mrs. Claus in her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride from the collection Sunshine and other verses for children (1889).

Recognition
Her family home on Falmouth's Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society. There is also a street named in her honor, "Katharine Lee Bates Road" in Falmouth. Bates lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton, Massachusetts. A historic plaque marks the site of her home.

Bates has two schools named in her honor, the Katharine Lee Bates Elementary School, located on Elmwood Road in Wellesley, Massachusetts and the Katharine Lee Bates Elementary School, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The latter was founded in 1957.

She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Poetry

 * The College Beautiful, and other poems. Cambridge, MA: H.O. Houghton, 1887. w
 * (As James Lincoln) Relishes of Rhyme, Richard G. Badger (Boston, MA), 1903.
 * America the Beautiful, and other poems. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1911. w
 * Fairy Gold: Poems. New York: Dutton, 1916. w
 * The Retinue, and other poems. New York: Dutton, 1918. w
 * Selected Poems of Katharine Lee Bates (edited by Marion Pelton Guild). Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930. w

Fiction

 * Rose and Thorn. Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1889. w

Non-fiction

 * English Literature: Outline studies in the early drama. Wellesley, MA: 1892. w
 * The English Religious Drama. New York: Macmillan, 1893. w
 * English Drama: A working basis (with Lydia Boker Godfrey). Boston: S.G. Robinson, 1896. w
 * Hours in Dreamland with the Modern English Poets. Boston:S.G. Robinson, 1897. w
 * American Literature, Chautauqua Press (New York, NY), 1897.
 * Spanish Highways and Byways. New York & London: Macmillan, 1900. w
 * From Gretna Green to Land's End: A literary journey in England (photographs by Katharine Coman). New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1907. w
 * The Story of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1909.
 * Shakespeare: Selective biography with bibliographical notes. Wellesley College, 1913. w
 * Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, Retold by Katharine Lee Bates, illustrated by Angus MacDonall, color plates by Milo Winter. Chicago & New York: Rand, McNally, 1914. w
 * Sigurd Our Golden Collie, and Other Comrades of the Road. New York: Dutton, 1919. w
 * Yellow Clover, A book of remembrance. New York: Dutton, 1922. w
 * The Pilgrim on the Road to Bethlehem. New York: Valhal Studio, 1922. w
 * The Pilgrim Ship. New York: Woman's Press, 1926. w
 * America the Dream. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1930. w
 * An Autobiography, in Brief, of Katharine Lee Bates. Falmouth, MA: Enterprise Press, 1930. w

Chidren's books

 * Santa Claus's Riddle. Boston: D. Lothrop, [188-?]
 * Sunshine. Boston: D. Lothrop, 1887. w
 * Goody Santa Clause on a Sleigh Ride.Boston: D. Lathrop, 1889. w
 * Hermit Island. Boston: D. Lothrop, 1890. w
 * Sunshine, and other verses for children. Boston: Wellesley Alumnae, 1890. w
 * In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael. New York: Dutton, 1913. w
 * The Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales. Chicago:Rand McNally, 1921. w
 * Little Red Riding Hood and other old-time fairy tales (with Margaret Evans Price). Chicago: 1921. w
 * Little Robin Stay-Behind, and other plays in verse for children. New York: Woman's Press, 1923. w

America the Beautiful

 * America the Beautiful: The complete verses. Berkeley, CA: Publishers Group West, 2001. w
 * America the Beautiful: A song to celebrate the wonders of America (illustrated by Ann & Todd Owen). Minneapolis, MN: Picture Window Books, 2003.
 * America the Beautiful (illustrated by Chris Gall). Boston: Little, Brown, 2004. w
 * America the Beautiful: A pop-up book (illustrated by Robert Sabuda). New York: Little Simon, 2004. w

Translated

 * Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Romantic Legends of Spain (with Cornelia Frances Bates). New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1909. w

Edited / compiled

 * (Editor) The Wedding Day Book, with the Congratulations of the Poets. Boston: Lothrop, 1882. w
 * (Editor) Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Boston: Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1889. w
 * (Editor) Ballad Book. Boston & New York: Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1890.
 * (Editor) Shakespeare's Comedy of The Merchant of Venice. Boston & New York: Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1894. w
 * (Editor) Shakespeare's Comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Boston & New York: Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1895. w
 * (Editor) Shakespeare's Comedy of As You Like It. Boston & New York: Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1896. w
 * (Editor) Stories from the Chap-Book.Chicago: H.S. Stone, 1896. w
 * English Drama: A Working Basis (Compiled with Lydia Boker Godfrey). Boston: S.G. Robinson, 1896. w
 * enlarged as Shakespeare: Selective Bibliography and Biographical Notes, (compiled by Bates and Lilla Weed). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, 1913. w
 * English History Told by English Poets (compiled with Katharine Coman). New York: Macmillan, 1902; New York & LOndon: Macmillan, 1908; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969. w
 * (Editor) Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. New York: Silver, Burdett, 1902. w
 * (Editor and author of introduction) The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. (14 volumes), New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1902. w
 * (Editor) Hamilton Wright Mabie, Norse Stories retold from the Eddas. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1902. w
 * (Editor) The Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903. w
 * (Editor) John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River; or, the Black Brothers: A Legend of Stiria (illustrated by John C. Johansen). Chicago & London: Rand, McNally, 1903. w
 * (Editor) Tennyson]]'s The Princess. New York: American Book Co., 1904. w

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Fonds
Collections of Bates's manuscripts are housed by the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA; Falmouth Historical Society, Falmouth, MA; Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Wellesley College Archives, Wellesley, MA.