Personal Library of Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn Personal Library

Katharine Hepburn was born into a family where her parents instilled into their children that they could become whoever they wanted to be. Her father, Thomas Norval Hepburn was a urologist, and her mother, Katharine Haughton Hepburn was a suffragist and birth-control activist. As a child, Hepburn met notable people such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of Herland (My review of Herland); Emmeline Pankhurst (My profile of Emmeline Pankhurst) and Margaret Sanger (My profile of Margaret Sanger).

Hepburn earned a BA from Bryn Mawr College, her mother’s alma mater. The process of pursuing her degree taught her how to work hard, which is something she did throughout her acting career.  Nominated for 12 Oscar Awards, winning four, Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most wins. What makes Hepburn so interesting is that she never got caught up with the Hollywood lifestyle – preferred wearing pants to revealing dresses, avoided publicity, shunned the Hollywood party scene and guarded her privacy.

Well read, Katharine Hepburn had an extensive personal library. The types of books in her library were diverse – from many genres. She had books that would make her better at her craft, but she also had other interests which helped her to be a more rounded person. I noticed that for the films that she starred in that are based on books, she read the books so that she got insights into the characters. She read biographies written about her, and those about Spenser Tracy with whom she worked with for over 25 years. Below are some of the titles that were in her personal library. This blog series is possible because of the work of Library Thing.

Books from Katharine Hepburn Personal Library

Instrument, a Novel, John O'Hara
Hunter's Horn, Harriette Louisa Simpson Arnow
Nobody's in Town, Edna Ferber
Flowers of the World, Frances Perry
Wildflowers Across America, Lady Bird Johnson
Great gardens of the Western World, Peter Coats
The Portfolios of George Hurrell, George Hurrell
The Photographic Art of Hoyningen-Huene, William A. Ewing
Horst: His Work and His World, Valentine Lawford
The Private World of Katharine Hepburn, John Bryson
Hepburn: Her Life in Pictures, James Spada
Katharine Hepburn, Sheridan Morley
The Films of Katharine Hepburn, Homer Dickens
Young Kate, Christopher P. Andersen
The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English, F. G. Fowler
Webster's New international dictionary of the English language (Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language with Reference History Second Edition Unabridged [3 Volume Set]), William Allan Neilson
The Incredible Mizners, Alva Johnston
The Looking Glass War: A George Smiley Novel, John Le Carré
Of the Farm: A Novel, John Updike
The Disenchanted (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage), Budd Schulberg
Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger
Tales from Shakespeare, Charles Lamb
The American Shakespeare Festival; the Birth of a Theatre, John Houseman
The Merchant of Venice (Signet Classics), William Shakespeare
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Wordsworth Royals Series), William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew (Folger Shakespeare Library), William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure (Folger Shakespeare Library), William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night or, What You Will, William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing (Folger Shakespeare Library), William Shakespeare
The Life of Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare
The New Temple Shakespeare (40 Volume Set), William Shakespeare
The heroines of Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Sonnets, William Shakespeare
The comedies of Shakespeare (Four Great Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Twelfth Night; The Tempest (Signet Classics)), William Shakespeare
The Tragedies of Shakespeare (Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Signet Classics)), William Shakespeare
Born yesterday: A comedy in three acts, Garson Kanin
Murder in the Cathedral, T. S. Eliot
The Cocktail Party, T. S. Eliot
From Here to Eternity, James Jones
The Golden Apples, Eudora Welty
Giant (Perennial Classics), Edna Ferber (My review Giant by Edna Ferber)
American Theatre As Seen by Hirschfeld, Al Hirschfeld
The World of Hirschfeld, Al Hirschfeld
Spencer Tracy, Alison King
Spencer Tracy: A Bio-Bibliography (Bio-Bibliographies in the Performing Arts), James Fisher
The Complete Films of Spencer, Donald Deschner
The Art Spirit, Robert Henri
George Bellows, ([American artists series]) Peyton Boswell
A Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Oriental Arts: Japan : 4 Volumes
Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries, Octavio Paz
The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Three Greek Plays: Prometheus Bound / Agamemnon / The Trojan Women [Paperback] [1958] (Author) Euripides, Aeschylus, Edith Hamilton
Sea of Grass, Conrad Richter
The Little Minister, J. M. Barrie
STAGE DOOR A PLAY IN THREE ACTS, Edna Ferber
On Golden Pond., Ernest Thompson
The Lion in Winter: A Play, James Goldman
The African Queen, C. S. Forester
The Lake: A Play in Three Acts, Dorothy Massingham
Little Women (Bantam Classics), Louisa May Alcott (My review Little Women by Louisa May Alcott)
Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill
The Blue Nile, Alan Moorehead
Ancient Egypt: An easy introduction to its Archaeology including a Short Account of the Egyptian Museum, CAiro……., J. Leibovitch
MGM: When the Lion Roars, Peter Hay
Film and Its Techniques, Raymond Spottiswoode
Loon Book, Tom Hollatz
Sold for a farthing, Lucy Helen Magdalen Kipps
The big chocolate cookbook, Gertrude Parke
The leading lady : play in three acts, Ruth Gordon
A treasury of the theatre (A Treasury of the Theatre: An Anthology of Great Plays from Aeschylus to Eugene O'Neill), John Gassner
The aborigines and their country, Charles Pearcy Mountford
The Loved and Envied, Enid Bagnold
The Materials and Methods of Sculpture (Dover Art Instruction), Jack C. Rich
Sketching As a Hobby, Arthur Leighton Guptill
The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, Ellen Chesler
Unshackled: Story of How We Won the Vote (Women's Voices), Christabel Pankhurst
A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane, Everett S. Allen
Tales and stories (The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales), Hans Christian Andersen
Fairy tales and stories, H. C. Andersen (My post Fairy Tales, Fables and Myths)
Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book: Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations, Edmund Dulac
The Princess: A Medley, Baron Alfred Tennyson
Silas Marner, George Eliot (My review – Silas Marner by George Eliot)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (My review The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people. Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.

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