Eleanor Gould Packard Papers

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Eleanor Lois Antonia Gould was born on October 3, 1917 in Newark, New York to William Mosher Gould and Eleanor (Loveland) Gould. She attended Utica Country Day School in New Hartford, New York for one year until her family moved to Ohio. Gould graduated from East Palestine High School in East Palestine, Ohio in 1934. She graduated with highest honors and was the class valedictorian.

Gould won a $225 scholarship (tuition for one year) from Oberlin College in French in 1933, and she entered for the 1934-35 academic year. She originally planned to major in Chemistry, but changed her major to English, and was involved in writing for The Oberlin Review student newspaper. Gould received academic honors in the four years that she attended Oberlin College, including the Freshman Highest Honor in 1935, and consistently stayed in the top 10 percent of her class. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1937, and graduated summa cum laude with the A.B. degree in 1938.

After graduating from Oberlin, Gould held a few editing positions at several book and magazine publishing companies in New York City. On her 28^th birthday, Gould was interviewed at The New Yorker, where she was ultimately hired and began her work as the prose editor (later Grammarian, a title created for her) on November 5, 1945. Gould met Frederick A. Packard, a researcher and editor at The New Yorker, and they married on December 7, 1946. They moved to the Upper West Side in Manhattan in 1952 and lived there during their tenures at The New Yorker.

Eleanor Packard enjoyed a career of 54 years with The New Yorker, editing prose for the magazine for notable authors such as Philip Hamburger, Ved Mehta, Lillian Ross, and E.B. White. One of her favorite achievements was receiving a separate credit in the second edition of E.B. White’s expanded and modernized version of The Elements of Style in 1972. Packard stayed at The New Yorker until she suffered a stroke in 1999.

Packard was very active outside of her career life. She was an avid traveler, having visited Antarctica, and was a member of Mensa. Music and dance were some of Packard’s favorite hobbies, but after becoming deaf in 1990, she focused her interests on the New York Mets. Packard was awarded the honorary L.H.D. from Oberlin College in 2000, but she was unable to receive it in person for health reasons.

Eleanor Gould Packard died on February 13, 2005 in Manhattan. She was predeceased by her husband, Frederick A. Packard, in 1974. She was survived by one daughter, Susan Hathaway Packard, who also attended Oberlin College.

Sources Consulted

Eleanor Gould Packard’s former student file (Oberlin College Archives RG 28/2).

Note written by Louisa C. Hoffman