AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY CHILDREN'S AUTHOR AND MONTESSORI EDUCATOR RITA KISSIN ASKING JAMES B. POND IF GERMAN LECTURE AGENTS HAVE NEW YORK REPRESENTATIVES.

Kissin writes to James B. Pond of the New York City Pond Lecture Bureau telling him she is planning a lecture tour of German-speaking countries in Europe and asking him to let her know whether German lecture agents have representatives in New York. "I speak in German and have credentials from, Postmaster General [Harry] New, Secretary [of State Frank B.] Kellogg and the German Ambassador".

Born in the U.S. in 1885 and educated in Germany and Russia to the age of fourteen, Rita Kissin returned to America to complete her education. After graduating from the Second International Montessori Training Course in Rome in 1914 she organized and operated Montessori kindergartens in New York and New Jersey. Two years later she began lecturing for the New York Board of Education on European travel and the Montessori Method. She worked briefly for the Universal Film Company in the 1920s, wrote publicity stories for Mary Pickford, Cecil B. De Mille and others and became Hollywood correspondent for Frankfurter Zeitung. In the thirties she studied psychology at the New School for Social Research and acted as a consultant in the Montessori Method to schools in Honolulu. Kissin was the author of children's books and also wrote about the Montessori Method and her own experiences of training for and practicing this method of teaching.