Description

Description: Acclaimed British writer and literary critic Dame Rebecca West (1892-1983) boldly signed this 1930 typed letter to publisher Henry Hart. The letter reads: “Dr. Mr. Hart, I shall be delighted if you use any remark of mine concerning Mr. Corey Ford’s parodies. I am only too glad that I shall be able to be of service to him in any way.”

Typed on a 6 1/2″ x 5″ sheet of “80 Onslow Gardens” imprinted stationery. Item #A01699

Rebecca West reviewed books for several publications including The Times and the New York Herald Tribune. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason (first published as a magazine article in 1945 and then expanded to the book in 1947), The Return of the Soldier (1918), a modernist World War I novel; and the “Aubrey trilogy” of autobiographical novels. Time called her “indisputably the world’s number one woman writer” in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959.

Corey Ford (1902-1969), American humorist and writer, published “The John Riddell Murder Case: a Philo Vance Parody” under a pseudonym (John Riddell) in 1930 (Charles Scribner’s Sons). He published 30 books and more than 500 magazine articles during his career.

Henry Hart was an American writer (“Dr. Barnes of Merion”, 1963) and publisher who worked as Publicity Director for Scribner’s Sons, Editor-in-chief of Putnam’s Sons, an Associate Editor of Time and Fortune, the founding member and first editor of Films in Review and a founding member of Equinox Cooperative Press. He edited the American Writer’s Congress (1935) and was responsible for the English-translation publications of Thomas Mann’s works.

Condition: Mailing fold, otherwise fine condition.