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Lot 243

WOOLF (VIRGINIA)
Autograph letter signed, to Margot Johnson, 1 April 1939; with envelope

29 March 2023, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £1,083.75 inc. premium

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WOOLF (VIRGINIA)

Autograph letter signed ("Virginia Woolf") to Margot Johnson ("Dear Miss Johnson"), asking her to come to Tavistock Square next Tuesday at 4.30 and hoping that is convenient, one page, creased at folds, 8vo (203 x 165mm.), 52 Tavistock Square, W.C.1, 1 April 1939; with blue autograph envelope addressed to Margot Johnson at Garlands Hotel, Pall Mall (2)

Footnotes

The recipient of Virginia Woolf's letter may well have been New York literary agent, Margot Johnson, on a visit to the UK in 1939. Her literary stable included Gertrude Stein and notably Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith's biographer, Joan Schenkar, describes Johnson as '...a supportive woman who was, says Patricia Schartle, Highsmith's subsequent agent, twenty years older than Pat and, "like Pat," a "notorious lesbian and a drunk"...' (The Talented Miss Highsmith, London, 2011, p.223). Our letter is apparently unpublished. It derives from the papers of Priscilla Fairchild, who was an editor at Time Life in New York in the 1940's.

Provenance: Priscilla Fairchild; her daughter Anne Elwes; thence by descent to the present owner.

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