[One-page TLS from Paddy Kitchen, the British novelist and biographer, to Margaret Crosland, discussing mothers and family logistics, including mention of Frank Bowling and Dulan Barber, plus discussion of A Fleshly School]

Beschreibung

One-page typed 'Letter Card' (Easter Saturday: 25 March 1967): white folded card with perforated edges, typed in black on the middle section, and featuring postal information and stamp on reverse, final sentence added in blue biro, closing: "Love from Paddy". Single fold, one perforated edge removed (to open card), unrelated pen list to reverse, identified as 'Paddy Kitchen' in pencil by Crosland, a little creased, small rust mark. Good+ An affectionate, frank and charming TLS from the British novelist, Paddy Kitchen, to her fellow biographer and, evidently, close friend, Margaret Crosland, written from Barnwell, Northamptonshire, though touching on family logistics (of separation and new beginnings): with her ex-husband, the British artist, Frank Bowling "now back in America, and I spend more time in London to be with Dulan [Barber], and sort out how and where we'll all live." Kitchen and Bowling had divorced the previous year (1966) and she went on to marry Barber (aka the thriller writers David Fletcher and Owen Brookes). Kitchen expands: "Things for me at anyrate seem to be working out OK: tight financially"; she is retyping "Fleshly" as "it's got battered, and will then give it to Chatto's" (Kitchen's second novel, it was eventually published as A Fleshly School in 1970 by Gollancz). However, when in the country her "thoughts don't get much above planting the peas an transplanting foxgloves, which is probably what I like to do best in the world!". She closes with news on Dan (Richard Sheridan), her son with Bowling, who is "very well - loves the village school [.and is] much keener on figures than words" (to her dismay, as: "I fear binary numbers (what are they) in the future"). Two years earlier, Kitchen (1934 2005) was one of the women interviewed by Nell Dunn in Talking to Women (1965). An independent spirit, talented gardener and "unswerving friend," she was a novelist and "empathetic biographer" of Patrick Geddes and Gerald Manley Hopkins. Her first novel Lying-In, published two years before this letter, enjoyed considerable success. With Barber, she was a funding founder of the Artists' Licensing and Collecting Society in 1977 and "a socialist to the last". From Margaret Crosland's archive. Crosland (1920-2017) was an important and prolific British literary biographer and translator of French and Italian authors, "who pioneered Cocteau" in Britain (Owen, 2009). She was the French literature consultant for the British publisher Peter Owen, who issued many of her biographies and translations, and thus she played a crucial role in introducing French authors, such as Jean Cocteau and Colette, as well as the Marquis de Sade, Apollinaire and Anaïs Nin, to mid-century British audiences. Owen observed that Crosland was "very important in advising us on books to publish. It was Margaret who pioneered Cocteau [. and] led us to Dalí, as she knew his novel Hidden Faces" (ibid). Her biographical subjects included both Colette and Jean Cocteau (titles much under discussion in her archive), Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Radiguet and Edith Piaf, and she translated works by writers including Sade, Emile Zola, Edmond de Goncourt and Cesare Pavese, as well as Colette and Cocteau. She was also a voluminous correspondent, literary broker and networker, as her letters evidence in rich and fascinating detail. Peter Owen (2009) Interview with Steven Fowler, Vice Magazine.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 3308

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Bibliografische Details

Titel

[One-page TLS from Paddy Kitchen, the British novelist and biographer, to Margaret Crosland, discussing mothers and family logistics, including mention of Frank Bowling and Dulan Barber, plus discussion of A Fleshly School]

Erscheinungsjahr

1967

Einband

Softcover

Zustand

Good+

Verkäuferkataloge

• Letters
• Signed & Association Items