Detail from David Mitchell’s notebooks for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
Manuscripts, letters, and general memorabilia from our favourite literary (and occasionally historical) figures. Collected by Angela.
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April 10, 2013
April 9, 2013
This week, “From the Outside In” shares the story of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play, Death of a Salesman.
“From the Outside In: A Visitor’s Guide to the Windows” provides an opportunity to discover more about the Ransom Center’s renowned collections of literature, film, photography, art, and the performing arts featured in the etched windows of the building.
(via slatevault)
April 8, 2013
April 5, 2013
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s letter to Walt Whitman about Leaves of Grass.
“I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves Of Grass.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy.”
(Source: bookshavepores)
April 2, 2013
April 1, 2013
Mary Shelley’s handwritten poem “Absence”, on the death of her husband. The poem reads:
Ah! he is gone — and I alone;
How dark and dreary seems the time!
‘Tis Thus, when the glad sun is flown,
Night rushes o’er the Indian clime.
Is there no star to cheer this night
No soothing twilight for the breast?
Yes, Memory sheds her fairy light,
Pleasing as sunset’s golden west.
And hope of dawn — Oh! brighter far
Than clouds that in the orient burn;
More welcome than the morning star
Is the dear thought — he will return!
(Source: bookshavepores)
March 29, 2013
A recently discovered trove of William Faulkner writings includes illustrated letters.
(Source: vintageanchorbooks)
March 10, 2013
Postcards from James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka.
(Source: openculture.com)
March 9, 2013
Manuscript by poet Archibald MacLeish.
The manuscript was accompanied with the following note, addressed to editor George Plimpton:
Dear George,
Will this do as a manuscript? It doesn’t show corrections but it shows me up as a pencil man, and worse still, a slave to the eraser. (Black Wing pencils have erasers which eradicate as clean as time).
As for the lines themselves—they went into a notebook and never came out again because Dylan’s death was too great a loss and George Barker’s piece was too deeply felt to fool with in a tone like this one.
But that’s all in the past now. People die too absolutely these days—disappear like pencil marks to an eraser—black wing.
Yours ever, Archie.
March 7, 2013
Fresno school library writes Copolla to suggest making a movie version of “The Outsiders”, Letters of Note
