Mostrar 1184 resultados

Descrição arquivística
Robert Graves collection
Previsualizar a impressão Ver:

1 resultados com objetos digitais Mostrar resultados com objetos digitais

Letters to Selwyn Jepson, Lot Gr-7

Gr-7 contains 200 pages of autograph letters from Graves to Selwyn Jepson, dated 1950 to 1967. There are 129 signed letters, the majority of which are written on 4to airmail paper and sent from Deya, Mallorca, plus 1 postcard and 2 telegrams. In the beginning the letters deal mainly with praise of Jepson as a novelist and their growing friendship, and then finally develop into Graves' "confidence in Jepson as advisor and aide in business matters". This very productive period includes such publications as The Nazarene Gospels Restored, Occupation Writer, Poems 1951, The White Goddess, The Greek Myths, The More Deserving Cases, and Colophon to Love Respelt. The commentary in these letters is far ranging, covering not only his publications and his career as a writer, but also theatre and film projects and the more important aspects of his personal life. There are a further 47 pages of related material and other correspondence as well as press cuttings and 3 interesting photographs of Graves circa 1967.

129 autograph letters, signed, 1 autograph postcard, signed (from Robert and Beryl Graves) and 2 telegrams, 1950-1967. To Selwyn Jepson, with a few to his wife Tania. The majority is written on quarto airmail paper from Deya, Mallorca, but occasional letters from England and America are included.

198 pages, quarto and octavo. Also six envelopes laid in chronologically.

Graves and Jepson first became friends around 1950 when they gave Sir Max Beerbohm lunch at Portofino. The first letter, 3 September [1950], contains praise for Jepson's novels which Graves and Beryl were reading aloud in nightly installments. In this and subsequent letters, Graves praises Jepson's skill and follows each new work with appreciation, but these closely-written, highly-informative letters document with far greater stress Graves' growing confidence in Jepson as advisor and aide in business matters, and, from about 1963, his reliance upon Jepson to keep a watchful eye on his children and grandchildren resident in England. He also keeps Jepson fully informed on the progression of his various emotional attachments, from the breach with Margot to the close of his involvement with Aemilia Laracuen.

The chief burden of the letters in Graves' commentary on the progress of his own works, starting with The Nazarene Gospels Restored, Occupation Writer, and Poems, 1951. In 1952: "I am passing proofs of a great enlarged White Goddess, and have reached page 400 in a fairly fixed draft of the mythology book [The Greek Myths], but it has to reach 700 before June..." The letters 1953-54 concern the American publication of various works by Graves and Jepson's part in dealings concerning them, chiefly with Ken McCormick, editor-in-chief at Doubleday & Co. "I was glad that the H[omer's] D[aughter] question had come up because it emphasized the fact [that] except for a small number of Graves fans, who buy everything, there was absolutely no connecting link or H[ighest] C[ommon] F[actor] between the publics which bought Naz Gosp, Homer's Daughter & Collected Poems & therefore the sales campaign had to be planned in a wholly different way every time... I also mentioned the 100% favourable reaction of Cassell's to H.D. So all will be well, nicely thanks to Selwyn".

In addition to charting the course of this most productive period, the mid-Fifties to mid-Sixties, Graves writes of several offers and projects from theatre and film producers; a new film project for I, Claudius (with Alec Guinness and Anna Magnani), Ingrid Bergman's wish to film Homer's Daughter, the prospect of selling an "old Arabian Nights script" to N.B.C. and a commission to write book and lyrics for a musical, Solomon and Sheba, to be directed on Broadway by Tyrone Guthrie. (1958-59). There are also references to a projected film treatment of The White Goddess, on which Graves and Jepson were to collaborate. Totally disillusioned with the eventual failure of these projects, Graves later quarrels with Sam Wanamaker over the proposed "billing" for a version of the Anger of Achilles (1966): "I simply wrote to my lawyer 'no dice'... After all, I did translate and dramatize the thing myself... What's wrong with these show-biz Americans? All con-men!".

These disappointments are off-set by Sam Spiegel's payment of $10,000 for film rights of Lawrence and the Arabs in 1959. Several letters discuss T.E. Lawrence's family reactions to Spiegel and the Terence Rattigan play, Ross. In 1960, Graves writes a letter headed "Sealed Lips Department", concerning his plans to "intervene" when Sir Herbert Wilcox is reported to be buying the film rights of Ross for $130,000: "[this is] a great embarrassment to Sam Sp. who is all behind with his own picture [Lawrence of Arabia]... but Ross has all its punch lines pinched from Lawrence & the Arabs, Lawrence to his Biographer (Robert Graves) [and] Goodbye to All That (revised edition) without acknowledgement in the programme...".

Graves continues to report on the publication of his books, asking Jepson's advice concerning The More Deserving Cases and others, and the letters close with Colophon to Love Respelt being seen through the press.

The letters include autograph versions of the two poems The Near Eclipse - (Gr-7-140) (in two versions) and Rebirth, - (Gr-7-166) also a "new rhyme" (16 November 1959) and an untitled verse of four lines (17 March 1967). A carbon typescript translation from a 17th C. Dutch epitaph at Haarlem is attached to a letter c. 1954. (Gr-7-31) Four early letters (Gr-7-17,19,24,26,28) (total 6 pages, quarto and octavo) are written on versos of revised typescript material (bearing autograph deletions and revisions) believed to be from The Greek Myths. Also revised typescript, (1 page) of the Creation (Gr-7-30).

Together with a folder of related material and other correspondence. (Gr-7-211-247). Comprising; Foreword or "blurb" for Nazarene Gospel Restored, Carbon TS (3 pages, quarto); Carbon TS title-page, contents list and "blurb" for "back of jacket" for Homer's Daughter (1954) with Graves' autograph addition, "Dedication: To SELWYN JEPSON of course", 4 pages, foolscap; three fragments of heavily revised typescript from The Nazarene Gospel Restored: LXXXV Follow Me! (2 pages) and CXII: The Death of Judas (3 pages) together 5 pages, foolscap; and approximately 20 letters, mostly to Jepson. Included are 2 autograph postcards signed. from Beryl Graves; a draft A.L.s. from Graves to Martin Freeth concerning The More Deserving Cases, and letters from Ken McCormick (of Doubleday), Graves' lawyer Newman Levy (with enclosures), Sir Allen Lane (Penguin Books) and F.H. Higginson, Graves' bibliographer.

With the following press-cuttings:

Symptoms of Love (sequence of twenty-one poems) from The Observer, 22 January 1961;

Undated letter to a newspaper, headed Nummick, N.D.;

Letter to the Observer, 4 November 1962, headed Teenage Reading (with autograph correction in Graves' hand); article by Charles Graves, Robert Graves - by Charles, from Evening Standard 6 October 1961;

A short review of the American edition of Love Respelt, captioned by hand "Birmingham News 10-2-66"...

Also with three interesting photographs of Graves.

Resultados 1 a 10 de 1184