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Lot 68

ELIOT (T.S.)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £250 inc. premium

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ELIOT (T.S.)

Typed letter signed, to Sir Ronald Storrs, at the review European Affairs, regretting that "your dunning should have to fall on such stony ground, but it is perfectly true that I cannot possibly contemplate any such undertakings for the rest of this year. I should very much have liked to lunch with you when perhaps I could have presented the inevitability of my position in a convincing way, and I am very sorry to find that I am engaged for lunch on Thursday, 16th", one page, small 4to, headed paper, Faber & Faber, 7 June 1949

Footnotes

Eliot's unwillingness to contribute an article to Storrs's review no doubt stemmed in part from the looming deadline posed by The Cocktail Party, due to open at Edinburgh on 22 August, as well as from the world-wide attention which came with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature the year before. Indeed, pressure of work became so much that his secretary quit Faber's that August (to be replaced by a young Valerie Fletcher from Leeds). Eliot's correspondent, Sir Ronald Storrs, is best known as the mentor of Lawrence of Arabia and author of Orientations. He had by this time retired from the colonial service, and was editing the monthly review, European Affairs. The appearance of Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture in 1948 might have encouraged Storrs to approach him for a contribution.

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