Item 0034 - Letter from Anna Hunt

Born and raised in Montreal, author Anna Rebecca Gale was the oldest daughter of the well-known family of Judge Samuel Gale, a judge in the Supreme Court of Lower Canada. Following her father’s death in 1865, Anna and her two sisters traveled throughout Europe. She published her first book of poems, “Studies for poems,” in 1877, the year before her marriage in 1878. At the age of 38, she married American geologist and chemist Thomas Sterry Hunt (1826-1892), who was already a famous scientist. He had been in Canada since 1847 working on the Canadian Geological Survey under Sir William Logan, a job he continued to do until 1872. He also taught at Université Laval in 1857 and at McGill University from 1862 until at least 1868. He was a member of many organizations, often as president, and he contributed to many scientific journals. The couple lived in Boston while Hunt was teaching geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; as a faculty wife, Anna met various literary figures such as Henry Wadworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes. She and Hunt had no children and separated in 1884. Anna wrote a second book of poems entitled “In Bohemia and other studies for poems” in 1905. In 1914, she published two novels, After Many Days and Disturbers; she wrote the latter under the pseudonym "Claude Berwick Canadienne." She died in London and is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.