SOURCE: Milbank, Helen K. “Mary Ellen Chase: Teacher, Writer, Lecturer.” Colby Library Quarterly 6 (March 1962): 5-13.

In the following essay, Milbank presents an overview of Chase's long career.

It is fashionable these days for institutions of higher learning to invite successful novelists and poets to spend a semester or longer on the campus, hopefully to teach a course in “creative writing,” or perhaps just to be there as an object of interest to visitors and an example to students. Sometimes the Great Man or Great Woman turns out to be a good teacher, sometimes not.

“Creative-ness,” some Geniuses have explained, “is stifled by the demands of the classroom.” The demands of the classroom not only never stifled Mary Ellen Chase's creative abilities, they seemed on the contrary to enhance and excite them. Those institutions fortunate enough to have Miss Chase on their faculties were thus never troubled by this...