Edith May collection (1983.12)

Biographical Note

Edith McClees May was born in Boston, MA in 1877 to Samuel May Jr. and Helen (McClees) May. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1897 and then taught at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA. In 1904, she founded a school in France and Italy named the Travel School for American Girls, which she operated until the outbreak of World War I. During the war, May worked for relief organizations in France, including the American Red Cross, the French Wounded Emergency Fund, and the Anglo-French Society. For a time she served as Head of Dispensaries in France under the American Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1921, May was one of twelve women selected by Jane Addams to act as a social worker among the women of Czechoslovakia. During this time, May began planning to open an educational institution for American and European women college graduates. In 1928, she founded the Villa Collina Ridente, a Center for European and International Study, in Florence, Italy. She operated this institution until World War II, when the property was bombed and looted.

The institution was never rebuilt after the war and May settled in her family home at the end of Cold Spring Lane in Wickford, RI. She lived there until she passed away in 1970.