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LAWRENCE, DAVID HERBERT. 1885-1930. Autograph Manuscript, entitled "The Flying Fish," 39 pp recto and verso, 4to, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1925,
11 April 2016, 10:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$35,000 inc. premium
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LAWRENCE, DAVID HERBERT. 1885-1930.
Autograph Manuscript, entitled "The Flying Fish," 39 pp recto and verso, 4to, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1925, the first 9 pp in the hand of Frieda Lawrence with the remainder in that of the author, in alternating sepia and black ink on lined yellow paper, pages removed from a notebook with some marginal losses.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT D. H. LAWRENCE MANUSCRIPT TO APPEAR AT AUCTION WITHIN THE LAST 40 YEARS. In March 1925, while convalescing in Oaxaca, Mexico from a severe bout of malaria that nearly killed him, D. H. Lawrence began dictating this novel to his wife, Frieda von Richthofen Wheekley Lawrence (1879-1950), who transcribed it between March 11 and 19. He then took it up himself on the last line of p 9 ("But he was as yet too ill to go...") and worked on it until March 25. This highly autobiographical narrative about the traveler Gethin Day reflects Lawrence's recent thoughts and experiences in Mexico as well as those of an earlier trip in 1923. He made extensive revisions on pp 15, 20-21 and 24. But the story was left unfinished and not published until Edward D. McDonald's Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers (1936). McDonald reported in his introduction that this "incomparably beautiful and moving fragment of a novel" was read aloud to his friends, the Brewsters, from a common child's copybook. "As [Lawrence] read, it seemed to reach an ever higher and more serene beauty," recalled Achsah Brewster in D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence (1934). "Suddenly he stopped, saying: 'The last part will be regenerate man, a real life in this Garden of Eden.' We asked: 'What shall you make him do? What will he be like, the regenerate man, fulfilling life on earth?' 'I don't just know'" (p 288). Although encouraged to complete it, Lawrence finally confessed, "I've an intuition I shall not finish that novel. It was written so near the borderline of death, that I never have been able to carry it through in the cold light of day" This autograph manuscript was not available in 1983 when Brian Finney published his collection St. Mawr and Other Stories (p xxxvi). The only other Lawrence manuscript to come up for auction in the last four decades, the four-paged "Laura Philippine" of 1927, sold at Bonhams London on March 29, 2011. Powell, The Manuscripts of D. H. Lawrence: A Descriptive Catalogue, 1937, pp. 14-15; Poplawski and Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: A Reference Guide, 1996, pp 357-58; Roberts and Poplawski, A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence, 2001, p 226.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT D. H. LAWRENCE MANUSCRIPT TO APPEAR AT AUCTION WITHIN THE LAST 40 YEARS. In March 1925, while convalescing in Oaxaca, Mexico from a severe bout of malaria that nearly killed him, D. H. Lawrence began dictating this novel to his wife, Frieda von Richthofen Wheekley Lawrence (1879-1950), who transcribed it between March 11 and 19. He then took it up himself on the last line of p 9 ("But he was as yet too ill to go...") and worked on it until March 25. This highly autobiographical narrative about the traveler Gethin Day reflects Lawrence's recent thoughts and experiences in Mexico as well as those of an earlier trip in 1923. He made extensive revisions on pp 15, 20-21 and 24. But the story was left unfinished and not published until Edward D. McDonald's Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers (1936). McDonald reported in his introduction that this "incomparably beautiful and moving fragment of a novel" was read aloud to his friends, the Brewsters, from a common child's copybook. "As [Lawrence] read, it seemed to reach an ever higher and more serene beauty," recalled Achsah Brewster in D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence (1934). "Suddenly he stopped, saying: 'The last part will be regenerate man, a real life in this Garden of Eden.' We asked: 'What shall you make him do? What will he be like, the regenerate man, fulfilling life on earth?' 'I don't just know'" (p 288). Although encouraged to complete it, Lawrence finally confessed, "I've an intuition I shall not finish that novel. It was written so near the borderline of death, that I never have been able to carry it through in the cold light of day" This autograph manuscript was not available in 1983 when Brian Finney published his collection St. Mawr and Other Stories (p xxxvi). The only other Lawrence manuscript to come up for auction in the last four decades, the four-paged "Laura Philippine" of 1927, sold at Bonhams London on March 29, 2011. Powell, The Manuscripts of D. H. Lawrence: A Descriptive Catalogue, 1937, pp. 14-15; Poplawski and Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: A Reference Guide, 1996, pp 357-58; Roberts and Poplawski, A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence, 2001, p 226.