BETJEMAN, JOHN. A small archive of 21 autograph letters signed, 1 incomplete autograph letter signed, 3 typed letters signed, and 5 autograph picture postcards signed to the writer, editor and critic Alan Ross (editor of The London Magazine), and 1 autograph letter signed to his wife Jennifer Ross. Written mainly from Wantage, Berks and London, 1950-1981. Together 54 pages, oblong 12mo-folio (mainly 8vo & 4to), in different color inks, three of the letters illustrated with sketches, with about 7 original envelopes, most signed "John," "John B.," or with initials, a few signed with fictitious names or names of others. With: 2 autograph manuscripts signed by Betjeman of prose celebrations of English Suburbia and Anglican churches, together 2 pages, folio, with one revision; Typescript of his poem "Revenge" (on the psychology of the motorbiker), 1 page, 8vo, 12 lines, on his imprinted stationary.

细节

BETJEMAN, JOHN. A small archive of 21 autograph letters signed, 1 incomplete autograph letter signed, 3 typed letters signed, and 5 autograph picture postcards signed to the writer, editor and critic Alan Ross (editor of The London Magazine), and 1 autograph letter signed to his wife Jennifer Ross. Written mainly from Wantage, Berks and London, 1950-1981. Together 54 pages, oblong 12mo-folio (mainly 8vo & 4to), in different color inks, three of the letters illustrated with sketches, with about 7 original envelopes, most signed "John," "John B.," or with initials, a few signed with fictitious names or names of others. With: 2 autograph manuscripts signed by Betjeman of prose celebrations of English Suburbia and Anglican churches, together 2 pages, folio, with one revision; Typescript of his poem "Revenge" (on the psychology of the motorbiker), 1 page, 8vo, 12 lines, on his imprinted stationary.

拍品专文

This lively Betjeman correspondence is more or less continuous through its thirty-one years, and is full of the poet's sense of fun. A standing joke about public schools runs through much of it; and letters are written using the personae of Stirling Moss, Cement Attlee, Stanley Watkins-Scott, a small child ("Mummy, please address this envelope") and "John Betjeman, Art-Worker." Subjects discussed include Beteman's work (much of which was published by Ross), Betjeman's wife Penelope's book on her "solitary riding tour," Ross's own poems, and a number of their contemporaries. 9 July 1960 (virtually all about his verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, published in 1960) : "Jock Murray [his publisher] has been negotiating with the Sunday Times for printing slabs of my dull, flat blank verse autobiography. It seems they have offered him more cash that I could believe & then I suddenly remembered I had offered to submit some slabs to you...When I had finished the thing [Summoned by Bells], I realized that by introducing the blank verse about teaching...after I'd been sent down from Oxford came as too much of an anticlimax, so I ended with Oxford. It is an accident in itself & you might like it for the LA [London Magazine]...Does this sound like slight reparation for my cupidity & forgetfulness..." 3 January 1974: "I hope old top you will be willing to come onto the Committee which decides on the winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A nice job of work designed by Edmund Dulac, and proper art nouveau. The Committee consists of Graham Hough, Charles Causley, Philip Larkin and your truly. Old William [Empson?] used to be on it and it is his place that I am asking you to fill. It's a harmonious body because it meets over luncheon in Charing Cross Hotel in a private room and the bill is paid by the Keeper of the Privy Purse...There is a good view down the river from the room where we meet..." From one of the prose manuscripts: "Pew openers, beadles, charity children, plaster work, sword rests, Dr. Johnson's pew in the gallery, scent of cedarwood, sound of...hymns...music...reverberating from Portland stone down Sunday alleys to the sliding Thames -- gone, gone, all gone! But in the suburbs, in incense-laden naves & chancels, our...youth comes crowding to our living, increasing & beloved Church of England."