Powys and
Dorothy Richardson
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys and Dorothy Richardson
EDITED BY JANET FOULI
This
correspondence, now published in the Uniform Edition of the Letters of
John Cowper Powys, is among the first in which the letters on both sides
have been collected, where it has been possible to reconstruct the
dialogue between the two writers. The result is an extraordinarily
stimulating exchange of views between two people who are not only prolific
letter-writers, but also significant literary figures.
Powys was
constant in his admiration of Dorothy Richardson's books, and his
encouragement and efforts to help her precarious financial circumstances
are evident from his letters to her. When he first wrote to her,
suggesting that they might meet, she failed to realize that he too was an
author and was reluctant to meet him:
'I think on
the whole [she writes] I agree with those who feel it is a mistake to meet
writers whose work one likes. There is so rarely any correspondence. The
enquirer risks losing "illusions" - and the writer a reader. Truth is
served however and that, no doubt, if one can face it, is great
compensation. We shall be at home on Sunday.'
From this
luke-warm invitation sprang a friendship that was to last twenty-five
years. Between 1929 and 1952, she wrote 64 letters and 40 postcards to
Powys and received 76 from him. Their first meeting in 1929 immediately
established their friendship and while they were not to meet frequently,
their correspondence quickly developed into a steady exchange of ideas and
of books. The letters in this remarkable correspondence belong to a period
that includes the publication of Ulysses, the translation into English of
A la recherche du temps perdu, the writings of Virginia Woolf and Henry
Miller, and, in another perspective, the Second World War. They bear
lively witness to these events and to the warm friendship of both writers.
They also provide memorably vivid self-portraits of Powys and Richardson,
showing each of them in his and her preoccupations and environment. These
are not deliberate self-revelations for the public gaze, for neither
writer anticipated publication. This adds a special interest, for we can
see Powys and Richardson as they were to themselves, and to each other,
and, not least, to those closest to them - the silent spouses and
collaborators, John Cowper's Phyllis Playter and Dorothy's Alan Odle.
This
long-awaited collection forms what, in a different context, Dorothy
Richardson calls 'an excursion into the mind and personality of the
author'. As such it is an invaluable complement to the books of each
writer and its contribution to our knowledge and understanding of both is
considerable.
Casebound,
215x135mm, 272 pp., illustrated. ISBN 978-1-897967-27-0, Price to numbers of
the Powys Society £28.00* (usual price £35.00) and £26.25* if ordered with
Powys and Emma Goldman. *Free post and packing in Great Britain.
Powys and
Emma Goldman
The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Emma
Goldman
EDITED BY DAVID GOODWAY
John Cowper
Powys and Emma Goldman became friends in the United States during the
First World War. 'Jack' was an established lecturer, travelling the
country extensively and attracting huge audiences, yet only beginning his
second career as an author, and 'Red Emma' was a central figure in
American anarchism. In respectable society she was considered a monster,
one of America's most dangerous agitators. To her many admirers she was a
mythic figure, a charismatic heroine who lived her life in the service of
a personal and political ideal.
After World
War I she was deported with several hundred 'alien radicals'to her native
and then revolutionary Russia, but although she fled from there after
less than two years, continued to be excluded from America. She renewed
contact in 1936 with Powys, by now a major novelist, wishing to establish
herself as a lecturer in Britain. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil
War, she was called to Barcelona as the foremost international anarchist
activist, and in consequence Powys was immersed in details of the
unfolding conflict and of the anarchist ideal, all to be imprinted on his
writings, both fiction and non-fiction, in the late 1930s and 40s. Emma
Goldman in turn benefited from the characteristic generosity of his
response during her dispiriting attempts to mobilize moral and material
support for the Spanish anarchists in London.
In this
important and fascinating collection, one of the few in the Uniform
Edition of the Letters of John Cowper Powys to contain both sides of the
correspondence, Emma Goldman recounts and analyzes her experiences in a
series of lucid but passionate letters.
Casebound, 215x135mm, 188pp..illustrated. ISBN
978-1-897967-84-3. Price to members of the Powys Society £24* (usual price
£30.00) and £22.50* if ordered with Powys and Dorothy Richardson. *Free post
and packing in Great Britain.
The
Letters of John Cowper Powys to Sven-Erik Tackmark
Edited by Cedric Hentschel
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys to G.R. Wilson Knight
Edited by Robert Blackmore
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys to H. W. & V. Trovillion
Edited by Paul Roberts
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys to Ichiro Hara
Edited by Anthony Head
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys to Phillppa Powys
Edited by Anthony Head
The Love
Letters of John Cowper Powys and Frances Gregg
(two volumes) Edited by Oliver and Christopher Wilkinson
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys to Glyn Hughes
Edited by Frank Warren
The Letters
of John Cowper Powys to Frank Warren
Edited by Frank Warren
Full details of THE POWYS
HERITAGE SERIES booklets from Cecil Woolf to appear here shortly.
