In early 1960, at the behest of the Sunday Times, Rebecca West undertook a three-month tour of South Africa. Below, West—just beginning her stay in South Africa—writes home to her husband Henry Andrews, detailing her impressions of the country and … Continued
And perhaps true literature (when you “get it”) is something like a disease which one feels in one’s bones, sinews and joints…
Below, theater critic and writer Kenneth Tynan reaches out to New Yorker editor William Shawn, regarding potential pieces on Paul McCartney, Harold Pinter, and Czech writer Antonin J. Liehm. Tynan had been a regular contributor to the New Yorker in the late … Continued
“Yes, isn’t a conscience a damned nuisance? Here I am spending 18 or 20 months on a book that will bring me in 4 months’ living expenses. But it has to be done.”
In the letter below, a twenty-eight-year-old Tolstoy responds to his relative’s accusation that he behaves inconsistently. He confesses “remorse” for being unable to break ties with his current companions, before discussing the lukewarm reception of his fiction. TO COUNT S. … Continued
With the following letter Ezra Pound sent several poems to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry: A Magazine in Verse. She rejected them all, including “Vergier,” “Mr. Styrax,” and “Ritratto,” deeming them “unpublishable” as they were too “frank.” Even so, Monroe … Continued
Below, J. R. R. Tolkien to his son Christopher, discussing new chapters of his Lord of the Rings trilogy; a beautiful, disquieting Christmas experience; and the hatred of democracy among the philosophers and oligarchs in ancient Greece. At the time (1944), Christopher—his … Continued
Below, Kingsley Amis responds to Donald Davie’s “Hobbits and Intellectuals,” which took a previous piece by Amis (about a political dispute with a pseudonymous “R”), and the huge popularity of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy as starting points for a … Continued
“The local squire showed up with a jar of aspic, the children began to destroy the tree ornaments, and driving home the moon was as bright as day and people were skating on every pond. So we remember the Prince of Peace, may it please Him.”
Joseph Johnson was a London-based bookseller and publisher famous (notorious) for printing the work of intellectual ‘radicals’ such as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, William Blake (whom he employed, occasionally, as an engraver) and Mary Wollstonecraft. Below, Wollstonecraft writes to Johnson … Continued
