Dates

• Existence: 1902-1997

Biography

Janet Pressley was born in 1902 in Nebraska. She received an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Nebraska in 1922 and an M.A. in Philosophy in 1923, also at the University of Nebraska. In 1927 she married one of her poetry teachers, Edwin Ford Piper, who was some thirty years older than she. Edwin was a member of the English faculty at the University of Iowa in the early years of the twentieth century, when the New Humanists were displacing the more formal poets of an older generation. Edwin and Janet, who was a graduate student in the department, were caught up in this conflict and Janet believed it contributed to her husband's early death of a brain hemorrhage. Several of the manuscripts in the collection deal with this phenomenon. Feeling unwelcome at the University of Iowa after she received her Ph.D., Janet moved to Texas where she took up a position at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville in 1942. She was to remain in this position for thirty years where, according to Dr. David S. Gallant in his introduction in Behind This Mortal Bone: Poems 1920-1938 . . . she became a legendary figure among her students and colleagues. Her intellectual brilliance, acumen and training based upon vast reading in several languages made her renowned among the large number of people with whom she came in contact. (p.3) She apparently attempted suicide in 1949 and her son put her under the treatment of Dr. Hauser, who used electric shock therapy on her. This incident alienated her from her son. She died in Huntsville in August 1997.   Norman Sage's Maecenas Press published her Behind This Mortal Bone in 1990. In the early 1980s Janet wrote to him, enclosing poems. Mr. Sage donated these letters and poems, and they form part of the collection.   She read widely and her writings, including letters, are filled with literary allusions, citations, and suggested readings. She could argue a point intelligently and convincingly. Nevertheless, her poetry did not find a national publisher. Most of her works are self-published and a great many of them are bound manuscripts.

Found in 1 Collection or Record: