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Gladys Schmitt Collection

While a professor at the University, Gladys Schmitt donated the manuscripts and typescripts of her novels to Hunt Library's Fine and Rare Book Rooms. Shortly after her death, her husband Simon Goldfield and niece Elizabeth Culley donated additional manuscript material, as well as correspondence, photographs, juvenalia, and unpublished work. The collection also contains copies of all of her published novels, including foreign language editions, most of her published poems and stories, and critical reviews of her work

Gladys Schmitt was an author, scholar, editor of Scholastic Magazines and Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. Born May 31,1909, her talents emerged as a child when she wrote many verse plays, four of which were staged at her elementary school. She continued writing throughout junior high and high school, eventually winning a Scholastic scholarship to the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College). Later, she received a scholarship and transferred to the University of Pittsburgh. In college, she achieved her first important publication -- her poem "Progeny" appeared in Poetry magazine.

After graduation, she began work as an assistant editor for Scholastic Magazines. She was eventually promoted to the associate editorŐs position but gave up the job to teach at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Shortly after joining the faculty, she published her first novel, The Gates of Aulis in 1942, which won the Dial Press Award for new fiction. Two years later, she wrote David the King, which was published by Dial Press, and later became a Literary Guild selection and #1 bestseller. This book was extremely successful, sold over a million copies, and was translated into ten languages.

In 1953, she was promoted to the position of Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Tech. After the publication of her critically acclaimed novel Rembrandt , Schmitt was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania and also received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Pittsburgh. The following year, numerous unfortunate family crises caused her to have a nervous breakdown. While in psychoanalysis, she wrote Sonnets for an Analyst, considered by some to be her best and most revealing work. In 1972, she received the Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching at Carnegie Mellon University. Her last novel, The Godforgotten, was published that same year and became an alternate selection for the Book of the Month Club. A few months after its publication, she died of a heart attack.