Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879-1944) was an American writer, born in Brockton, Massachusetts, and educated at Radcliffe College.

She was a reader in English at Bryn Mawr, 1901-10. Mrs. Gerould was criticized as weighing down a distinct literary talent with an unbending conservatism, which though it did not attract the masses, had a coterie of faithful admirers. In addition to many articles in magazines she published:

  • Vain Obligations (1914)
  • The Great Tradition (1915)
  • Hawaii, Scenes and Impressions (1916)
  • A Change of Air (1917)
  • Modes and Morals (1919), a collection of essays
  • Valiant Dust (1923), a collection of short stories

Famous quotes by katharine fullerton gerould:

    You can be slum-born and slum-bred and still achieve something worth while; but it is a stupid inverted snobbishness to be proud of it. If one had a right to be proud of anything, it would be of a continued decent tradition back of one.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)

    ...I cannot conceive a more odious society than one where nothing is considered indecent or impious.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)

    ... the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)

    Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)

    No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius—a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)