I am trying to find ANY biographical info on Marcella Spann (later
married to a MrBooth) ,
orginally from Washington. Only references I have found are in
Torrey's THE ROOTS OF TREASON, and an article in Paideuma 3 which
Torrry references.

Marcella Spann was an English teacher who wrote to Ezra Pound and then
met Ezra Pound at St Elizabeth's in the 1950's, returned to Italy with
him, where he proposed - and was sent packing by EP's wife and
mistress.

That's all I have been able to find from any sources.
with him

Hello.

Marcella Joyce Spann was born in 1932.

According to the article, "The Strange and Inscrutable Case of Ezra
Pound," by Robert Wernick in the December 1995 issue of Smithsonian
magazine, Ms. Spann was from Texas.
The article is not freely available online, but there is an abstract
on the Smithsonian web page:
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues95/dec95/pound.html
I did obtain the full-text of the article, though, and here's the
relevant excerpt:
"After a brief round of visits, he sailed for Italy, sharing a cabin
with his wife and a young lady from Texas, Marcella Spann, who had
been a regular visitor at St. Elizabeths and was now his secretary."

As you may know, Marcella Spann is listed as co-editor of Ezra Pound's
"Confucius to Cummings : an anthology of poetry" (1964).

Ms. Spann returned to Texas and completed a Ph.D. thesis at the
University of Texas at Austin in 1969. See the following listing from
the UT library catalog:
AUTHOR: Spann, Marcella Joyce, 1932- 
TITLE: An analytical and descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts and
letters in the Louis Zukofsky Collection at the University of Texas at
Austin.
PUBLISHED: (Austin, Tex. : s.n.), 1969, (c1970). 
DESCRIPTION: vi, 264 l. ; 29 cm. 
NOTES: Vita. 
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1969. 
http://utdirect.utexas.edu/lib/utnetcat/index.WBX?search_type=AB&search_text=spann+marcella

Ms. Spann's work on the Zukofsky Collection apparently continued into
the 1970s, and she published several works relating to that project
UT's Humanities Research Center. These works were published under the
name "Marcella Booth." See the listing for Marcella Booth also from
the UT catalog:
http://utdirect.utexas.edu/lib/utnetcat/index.WBX?search_type=AB&search_text=booth+marcella

You may also want to take a look at the following biographies which
concern the relevant period of Pound's life:

OLGA RUDGE AND EZRA POUND: "WHAT THOU LOVEST WELL . . ."
By Anne Conover
Yale University Press, $35, 351 pages, illus
From Barnes & Noble:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0DK0YETCDG&isbn=0300087039

"A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound" by Humphrey Carpenter
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=6UTJKMTCEI&isbn=0395416787

search terms: marcella spann, marcella booth, ezra pound

I hope this helps. Good luck with your research.

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 22 Jul 2002 21:12 PDT

Just a few additions:

In 1984, Marcella Booth apparently wrote an article entitled,
"Ezrology: The Class of '57" for the journal Paideuma. Here is the
citation:
Paideuma 13.3 (Winter 1984): 375-88
(from the web site of WilliamGaddis.org : 
http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/martinelli/smbibliography.html
)

Information about the Paideuma journal is available from the
University of Maine:
"http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/cat45.html

Also, the NYU library has a letter from Marcella Spann to John
Taggart, circa 1971-73. For more information:
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/coll_mss/taggart.html

Good luck.

I found an article, in Spanish, that makes brief mention of Marcella
Spann in connection with Ezra Pound:

http://www.web2mil.com/posdata/981127/separata/separata.html

The text adds little to the excellent collection of information that
juggler-ga has gathered, but you may be interested in seeing a photo
of Marcella Spann (the fourteenth image down, directly to the right of
some text that says "Llamó por teléfono varias veces a la Casa Blanca,
pero Roosevelt nunca lo recibió.")

Here is a link that will take you to just the photograph:

http://www.web2mil.com/posdata/981127/separata/marcell.jpg