Helen Kemp Frye

Helen Kemp Frye (1910–1986) was an educator, editor and artist. She was born in Toronto, Ontario, the daughter of Stanley and Gertrude Kemp. In 1937 she married Northrop Frye. She died in Australia while accompanying her husband on a lecture tour.

Helen Kemp Frye was educated at Riverdale Collegiate, Toronto and studied piano and musical theory at the Hambourg Conservatory of Music, Toronto. In 1929 she enrolled in the Pass Course at Victoria College, Toronto, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1933. Upon graduating she was offered a position in the education department at the Art Gallery of Toronto by Arthur Lismer, who was a personal friend of her father, a commercial artist. She spent one year at the National Gallery in Ottawa and a year studying at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England. Upon her return to Toronto she continued to work at the Gallery, conducting study groups, sending out loan exhibitions, and organizing lectures and concerts. In the late Thirties she worked as a contributing editor and then as art editor for Canadian Forum. From 1943 until 1946 the Toronto Star Weekly employed her as a reprint editor. She devoted much of her spare time to committee work at Victoria College and later, when Northrop Frye became College Principal, took charge of various women’s organizations at the College.

The custodial history is unknown.

The letters to Rena Maidment, the eight-page account of Northrop Frye's early life written by Maidment, the news clippings and the photographs in Accession 2024.06 were obtained from the estate of Rena Maidment by Mary Macdougall. The records were donated to Victoria University Library by Donald Macdougall, a cousin of Rena Maidment.