Description

Description: In this typed letter signed, Henry Van Dyke agrees with the correspondent’s criticism of the Swedish committee’s choice of the 1930 Nobel Prize Literature Award to Sinclair Lewis. Van Dyke sarcastically suggests that the author of Main Street and Elmer Gantry  “probably could not help writing those books in accordance with his nature. But to crown them as the best portrait of American literature is like . . . selecting Benedict Arnold as the finest type of American soldier.” He also ponders if “‘realism’ is real unless it includes some ideals?”

Signed, “Sincerely Yours/Henry Van Dyke”

Typed on a 7” x  5½” sheet of stationery imprinted:  “HvD/Avalon/Princeton N.J.” Item #A01878

Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxembourg by Woodrow Wilson  (1913-16). He was a professor of English literature at Princeton from 1899 to 1923 and the author of several works of fiction and poetry. He was also  a Presbyterian clergyman.

Condition: One mailing fold line. In very good condition.