British writer (1903-1950). Typed letter signed ("George"). Barnhill, Isle of Jura, Argyllshire. 4to. 1 p. Printed letter-heading.
$ 17,313 / 15.000 €
(60584)
To the novelist Anthony Powell ("Dear Tony"), declining to review a Gissing book [for the Times Literary Supplement]: "I'd love to do it but I'm really afraid I must say no. The thing is I'm not only struggling with this book of mine but shall also be pretty busy while in London", among other "time-wasting things to do" having to write a long article; he concludes: "Winter is setting in here, rather dark and gloomy. Already we light the lamps at about half past five. However we've got a lot more coal here than we should have in London, and this house is a lot more weather proof than my flat, where the water was coming through the roof in twelve places last winter".
In fine, fresh condition. - Powell was at this time Fiction Editor of the TLS and had asked him to review a new edition of A Life's Morning by George Gissing, an author Orwell greatly admired and a major influence. Orwell was in fact to write his well-known essay on Gissing, by way of a review of two other reissues, the following year. There is, in D.J. Taylor's words, 'an eeriness about the Gissing fixation that coloured the last years of Orwell's life' (p. 339). Orwell had been born in 1905, the year Gissing died; both men dying at the same age and of lung disease: Orwell describing Gissing's novels as having been 'sweated out of him during his struggle towards a leisure which he never enjoyed'..
British writer (1903-1950). Autograph letter signed ("George"). Ward 3, Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, Lanarkshire. 8vo. 3 pp.
$ 20,776 / 18.000 €
(60586)
To the novelist Anthony Powell ("Dear Tony"), describing his reviewing work for the Times Literary Supplement and reporting on improved health having embarked on a course of streptomycin ("...I am having a drug called streptomycin, which is a novelty in this country but is thought to be vy good. It appears to be doing its stuff, though it's too early for them to say for certain. The doctor says that my lung is healing up fast & that I ought to be out & about by the summer..."); after giving further news of Richard, who has been tested for TB, and his flat, he devotes the final paragraph to a discussion of the forthcoming uniform edition: "I've arranged to bring out my uniform edition at the rate of a volume a year, & at present I have got six books to go in it, as I have suppressed several.
I hope they'll be others later... I had always wanted to have something vy sort of chaste but solid in blue buckram for about 5/-. I notice both Evelyn Waugh's & Graham Greene's uniform editions are vy cheap-looking. They don't seem to be able to make a book now with covers that don't bend. It makes me vy envious to see American books". On lined paper, slight crumpling and contemporary drink-stains. - Among the reviews he mentions is "a rather dreadful anthology of recent American stuff called 'Spearhead'": this appeared in the TLS on 17 April 1948 and offered a long and wide-ranging review of current American poetry and prose, taking sideswipes at, among others, William Carlos Williams and E.E. Cummings, 'an irritating writer'; and noting that 'Henry Miller's favourite verb has been laboriously blacked out by hand, over a stretch of fifty pages'..
sold
Autograph letter signed ("George").
Autograph ist nicht mehr verfügbar
To the novelist Anthony Powell ("Dear Tony"), giving a detailed account of his health, the treatment available and his hopes of securing a consignment to somewhere warm abroad for a couple of months, all of which has meant that he has done little work for weeks: "have only done the rough draft of my novel, which I always consider as the half-way mark. I was supposed to finish it by May – now, God knows when", and gives his opinion that "in these days besides putting the date of publication in books one also ought to put the date of writing" ("...In the spring I'm reprinting a novel which came out in 1939 & was rather killed by the war, so that makes up a little for being late with my new one..."), and congratulates Powell on the progress of his Aubrey book; the rest of the letter he devotes to the subject of saddles, hoping Powell can procure one for the farm pony, used for running errands to save petrol, as "it's so tiring riding bareback"; ending with the news that Richard is "offensively well & full of violence", having been through whooping cough without even noticing he had it, and by giving his love to everyone. In fine, fresh condition. - The other novel which he describes as having been "rather killed by the war" is Coming Up for Air, which had been published on 12 June 1939 and which, in fact, sold well and was almost immediately reprinted. The second edition to which this letter refers came out on 13 May 1948, constituting the first volume in the Universal Edition of Orwell's works; the proofs of which Orwell received on 7 October and returned on 22 October 1947. Powell published John Aubrey and His Friends in 1948, and Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings of John Aubrey in 1949. This letter is included in the selected edition, George Orwell: A Life in Letters.
Autograph letter signed ("George").
Autograph ist nicht mehr verfügbar
Autograph letter signed ("George").
Autograph ist nicht mehr verfügbar