36 Facts About Louise Pound

Louise Pound was an American folklorist, linguist, and college professor at the University of Nebraska.

In 1955, Pound was the first woman elected president of the Modern Language Association, and in the same year, she was the first woman inducted into the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame.

An orator for senior Class Day Exercises, Louise Pound presented a speech entitled "The Apotheosis of the Common," an oration arguing the threat of prose to poetry, of the average to the individual.

In January 1895, just before receiving her master's degree, Louise Pound published a short story in the Nebraska State Journal, "By Homeopathic Treatment," describing an attempt at intervention for a socially conscious young woman, Matilda, by her friends, who attempt to introduce Matilda to Clementine, who believes woman's purpose is the selfless amelioration of society's evils.

Louise Pound continued her studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Heidelberg, earning her PhD in philological studies in 1900.

Louise Pound, focusing on her professional life in teaching and scholarship, did not continue her intimate relationship with Konigsberger, who later married a physician, Max Phister, who practised at Hong Kong before the Second World War and later at Beidaihe on the coast in North China.

Louise Pound was one of the pioneers of the linguistic study of American English.

Louise Pound sought to examine language trends in contemporary American English, most notably in word coinage and semantics, the historical origins of American pronunciations, and mutual influences of American literature, folklore, culture, and language.

Much of Louise Pound's scholarship involved identifying trends in American language and speech.

Louise Pound created a corpus of American euphemisms for associations with death, exploring American discomfort with the reality of morbidity.

Louise Pound delineated multiple instances where American English deviated from standard norms in the pluralization of Latin and Greek loan words.

In writing about Whitman's influences upon his work, Louise Pound identifies specific non-British influences and nuances to Whitman's writing such as Italian opera music; a predilection for French words and expressions involving nouns, slang, social words, and military terms; and unconventional renderings of classic bird poetry which use birds as symbols of fear, loss, and fatality as opposed to the conventional joyful and aesthetic birds metaphorically portrayed.

True to the characteristic form of her research, Louise Pound seeks to chronicle the features which distinguish American from traditional British folklore, as well as qualify the traits which set Nebraska folklore apart from other regions of America.

Each body of lore that Louise Pound collected is examined through historical, cultural, and linguistic lenses.

Louise Pound outlined the historical poetic nature of ballads and claiming them to be communal representations of contemporary culture which continue to evolve into perpetuity in American southwest and indigenous cultures.

In 1905 Louise Pound was a champion of the Order of the Black Masque, senior women's honor society, which became a chapter of Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society in 1920.

Louise Pound became a member of Mortar Board in that year.

Louise Pound was president of the American Folklore Society.

Louise Pound was the first woman to serve as president of the Modern Language Association, having previously served as its vice president and on the executive council.

Louise Pound was director and treasurer of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Louise Pound was a Foundation Member of the Linguistic Society of America in 1925.

Louise Pound was the first woman to have an article published in the society's journal, Language.

Louise Pound was first woman president of the society from 1938 to 1941.

Louise Pound was the Nebraska director and later national vice president of the American Association of University Women from the 1930s to 1944.

Louise Pound continued a correspondence with Ani Konigsberger, her "most intimate and enduring friend", for fifty eight years.

Willa Cather biographers Phyllis C Robinson and Sharon O'Brien argue that Pound was Cather's object of desire, O'Brien citing in her Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice Cather's 1892 and 1893 letters to Pound.

Louise Pound maintained a distinct rivalry with Mabel Lee, a faculty member of the University of Nebraska physical education department.

Louise Pound entered and won the Lincoln City Tennis Championship in 1890 and continued her tennis career competing against men for the University of Nebraska title in 1891 and 1892; winning both years.

At 18 years old, Louise Pound competed and won the Women's Western Tennis Championship in 1897.

Louise Pound was not only the first and only female in school history to earn a men's varsity letter, she was rated the top player in the country while working on her doctorate at Heidelberg University.

Louise Pound was an all-around athlete showing interest in figure skating, earning a 100-mile cycling medal in 1906, introducing skiing to Lincoln as well as being captain of her school's basketball team.

Louise Pound played center in their first women's basketball game in 1898 and continued to be involved with basketball by managing the university women's basketball team.

Louise Pound is the first woman in history to be inducted into the University of Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame, in 1955.

Louise Pound continued her tennis journey by playing doubles with Carrie Neely, at the age of 43, and winning the 1915 Central Western and Western doubles championships.

In 1926, at 54 years old, Louise Pound won the Lincoln city championship, being the first women's state golf champion.

Louise Pound died at a hospital in Lincoln on June 28,1958, after suffering from coronary thrombosis.