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An extensive archive of correspondence from the files of London publisher J. M. Dent and Sons. Approximately 285 letters, written in the 1920s and 1930s, with a scattering of earlier and later letters, mostly giving (and on occasion denying) permission to reprint literary work in various anthologies of poetry and prose. A considerable portion of the correspondence relates to permissions and payments for work to be included in books published as part of Dent's popular Everyman's Library. Many letters are addressed to Ernest Rhys (1859-1946), the founding editor of Everyman's Library, and to Guy Noel Pocock (1880-1955). Additionally, there are letters addressed to J. M. Dent, Thomas Caldwell, John Hampden (who was compiling a book of ghost stories), and others. Overall, the letters are in excellent condition. Some have indents from paperclips or small holes where once pinned, mostly at the upper left corners. The letters have the expected mailing folds. Several of the letters have rust marks from paperclips and some have minor creases, wrinkles, closed tears or small chips. These defects have been noted. Most of the letters are accompanied by rights and permissions letters, sometimes extensive, from and to J. M. Dent and Sons. Many of the carbons on flimsy paper are wrinkled or creased from decades of storage. Nevertheless, their content adds considerably to the depth and research value of the archive. The archive includes correspondence from (among others): Richard Aldington, Max Beerbohm, Vanessa Bell, Hilaire Belloc, Arnold Bennett, E. F. Benson, Ernest Bramah, Robert Bridges, Padraic Colum, Joseph Conrad, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Alfred Douglas, Lord Dunsany, T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, E. M. Forster, Edmund Gosse, Kenneth Grahame, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Houseman, Ted Hughes, James Joyce, C. S. Lewis, Rose Macaulay, Arthur Machen, John Masefield, A. A. Milne, Henry Newbolt, Ezra Pound, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Arthur Rackham, Vita Sackville-West, Siegfried Sassoon, George Bernard Shaw, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, James Stephens, J. R. R. Tolkien, Katharine Tynan, Hugh Walpole, Mary Webb, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf (typed signature), W. B. Yeats. J. M. Dent and Sons was sold to Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1986. In 1991 the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, purchased the J. M. Dent and Sons Records, 1834-1986 (150.0 linear feet; approximately 210,000 items) through Bertram Rota, Booksellers, London. Many of the UNC files are incomplete as they had been "pruned," and correspondence with Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, and others had been removed and sold. Calendar of letters available upon request. For sale as a collection. Seller Inventory # 164567
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