Sir Arthur Bryant Historian Biographer (5 results)

See his entry in the Oxford DNB, the revised version of which describes his pre-war Nazi sympathies. The recipient Philip Dosse was proprietor of Hansom Books, publisher of a stable of seven arts magazines including Books and Bookmen and Plays and Players. See 'Death of a Bookman' by the novelist Sally Emerson (editor of 'Books and Bookmen' at the time of Dosse's suicide), in Standpoint magazine, October 2018. 1p, 8vo. On the half-title of the book, neatly extracted and in good condition, with the following inscription written in a large and childlike hand underneath the printed title: 'For / Philip Dossé / from / the author / Arthur Bryant'.

1p., foolscap 8vo. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. He thanks him for his letter. 'The two Seymour books have no arrived and I will let you have the review as soon as I can get round to it.'.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB, the revised version of which describes his pre-war Nazi sympathies. The recipient Philip Dosse was proprietor of Hansom Books, publisher of a stable of seven arts magazines including Books and Bookmen and Plays and Players. See 'Death of a Bookman' by the novelist Sally Emerson (editor of 'Books and Bookmen' at the time of Dosse's suicide), in Standpoint magazine, October 2018. The present collection of eleven items totals 17pp (fourteen pages in autograph and four typed), in various sizes from 4to to 12mo. Each letter is on either one of his London or Salisbury letterheads, but in some the addresses are substituted, so that in the event only two are addressed from London. In the first letter (12 May 1974, typed) he states that he has been 'working day and night to get the first volume of my Life of Dr. Johnson finished by the end of this month' (the book remains unpublished), but that when he is 'less driven' he will be 'delighted to review an occasional book' for Dosse. In the next letter (17 November 1974, autograph) he states that his 'first volume on Johnson - "The Ascent of Parnassus" - won't be appearing now till next summer or autumn, as I wasn't satisfied with it and have spent this summer rewriting it. Its successor - "The English Socrates" - will have to wait till the following year. I thought the review of John Wain's book excellent.' In the next letter (30 December 1974, autograph) he complains that it has taken the Post Office 'more than five weeks' to deliver the copy of John Terraine's 'The Mighty Continent', sent for review by Dosse. In a subsequent letter (14 May 1975, autograph) he apologizes 'that the slowness of my recovery from my fall should have so long delayed my doing what you so kindly asked me to do'. He has written a first draft of Terraine's book, but is 'not yet satisfied with it'. He is however enclosing a review of 'what I consider to be a very unusual and perceptive volume of verse - a view I share with John Betjeman - by Louise Stockdale (The Hon Lady Stockdale) called "Waiting for Charon", which seems to me to merit far more notice than it is likely to receive in the scanty columns of our current literary press'. On 30 September 1975 (typed) he thanks Dosse for asking 'who I would like to review my Thousand Years of British Monarchy. Two people who were very keen that I should publish it are Eizabeth Longford and Dr. A. G. Dickens'. In a long autograph postscript he apologizes for 'the untidiness of the script and for not having it retyped, but in the pandemonium of my move - I have myself manhandled more than 10,000 books and carried them to their new shelves, in the past four weeks'. A letter of 31 October 1975 (autograph) states that he is sending a copy of 'my attempt to tell the essentials of our history in 35,000 words'. A week later he asks Dosse to arrange for a review of a book by 'an old friend', William Seymour's 'Battles in Britain'. 'It is a very fine piece of work, readable, accurate and, as military history should be, admirably clear. If the idea of my doing it appeals to you, there is no need to send me another copy, as I have one.' At the end of the same month, November 1975, Bryant thanks Dosse for his generosity over the advertisement for Bryant's book, adding 'The more I think about it, the more impressed I am by your achievement in making "Books and Bookmen" what it is - a great literary forum at a time when our literary cultural heritage seemed almost destroyed'. On 3 January 1976 (autograph) he sends a review of Margaret Lane's book on Dr Johnson, and enquires whether the Athenaeum club subscribes to 'Books and Bookmen': 'I have not seen it on display there. If not, I would like to write to the Librarian suggestion [sic] that, as the leading book-reviewing magazine, apart from the Times Lit. (and far superior to that!) now in England, it should certainly be in the Athenaeum library. The same applies to the R.A.C. and the Beefsteak, of both of which I am members, though I imagine Pratt's hasn't much place for monthly magazines, at least in these inflationary days.'.

English historian and biographer of Pepys (1899-1985). All six letters are 1 page, 8vo. In poor condition: creased, frayed and discoloured, with ruststains from a paperclip. All six are signed 'Arthur Bryant' and three are addressed to Mrs Cecil Roscoe, presumably the recipient's husband's name. Two of the letters are addressed to Roscoe at the Society of Women Journalists, Stationers' Hall. In the first letter Bryant says he would be pleased to address the Society. He might however be forced to cancel, 'owing to my absence from the country on Service duty'. There is a short manuscript postscript. The second letter is no more than a note: 'I am afraid the talk on An Historian's View of the War would make a map essential; do you think it would be possible to have one of the world to which I could point?'. In the third letter he says he 'enjoyed myself enormously'. Barring absence from the country he will 'come again and talk on Pepys'. The fourth and fifth letters discuss arrangements for another talk, and the last letter begins 'I hate to say no or to temporise, but I have taken so much on in the past, and have suffered so much from doing it, that I am trying to keep my outside arrangements down for the coming winter [.] I find, with the passage of years, that speaking in public takes much more out of me than it used to'. The lot,

Nine letters (eight ALsS and one TLS) totalling 16pp, 12mo, in close and neat autograph; and 2pp, 4to, typed. One from 1932 and the other eight from 1933. All signed 'Arthur Bryant'. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper, with slight rust-staining from paperclips to a couple of the letters. An interesting correspondence, in which Bryant gives an assessment of Pepys, and describes his approach to writing his biography. In one long letter (5 May 1933) Bryant describes his wider approach to the writing of history. Bryant is a problematic historian, and the tensions inherent in his work and character are exemplified in the present batch of correspondence. His work was explicitly praised by eight British Prime Ministers including Winston Churchill between Stanley Baldwin and Margaret Thatcher, but his standing among his peers has not been high. The recent attempt by Julia Stapleton to counter Churchill's biographer Andrew Roberts's damning characterisation of him as 'a supreme toady, fraudulent scholar and humbug', as well as 'a Nazi sympathiser and fascist fellow-traveller, who only narrowly escaped internment as a potential traitor in 1940', is not convincing. The present batch of nine letters dates from the period between Bryant's study of Charles II (1932) and the appearance of the first of the three volumes of his Pepys biography, 'The Man in the Making', published by Cambridge University Press in 1933. Shortly before the present correspondence, having been greatly impressed by Bryant's book on Charles II, the historian G. M. Trevelyan had passed over to him the extensive notes and papers of the Pepys scholar J. R. Tanner (1860-1931), to assist him in writing his Pepys biography. It has been the contention of several authorities that Bryant was inadequate in his acknowledgment of the heavy extent to which he relied on Tanner, and it is certainly true that after three volumes he left his work uncompleted at the same point of Pepys's life at which Tanner's papers end. Chappell was one of the leading authorities on Pepys, and published several works on him, including editions of his shorthand letters (1933) and Tangier papers (1935), and 'Bibliographia Pepysiana' (1933). The present correspondence exhibits many of Bryant's obvious failings, but Chappell's claim, at its close, that Bryant had failed to engage in 'fair dealing', and was guilty of 'the most outrageous piece of poaching that has ever come my way', would seem an overreaction to the behaviour of which he accuses him, and seems to display the asperity of a wider resentment, perhaps connected with misgivings about the nature of Bryant's scholarly approach. The first letter, 6 January 1932, is written as Bryant is working on his first Pepys volume, and does not give the impression of previous acquaintance, being addressed to 'Dr. Chappell' (unlike the other eight letters, which are written to 'Chappell'). He thanks him for sending his bibliography, 'and the delightful paper which introduces it', and states that he has 'added it to the bibliography which Dr Tanner had prepared and which I have taken over with his Pepys papers'. Tanner's papers, he has discovered, are 'far fuller than I at first thought and include a large number of what seem to be accurate though I have not yet checked any of them transcripts of Pepys' letters in the Bodleian. They are very elaborately arranged'. He feels they may be of help to Chappell in his work, and invites him to visit him to consult them. He thanks him for corrections to his book on Charles II (1931), explaining that his 'task' in writing the book 'was one of extreme compression'. He describes 'a small MS book of a few pages of an early 17 century shorthand', among 'the Shakerley MSS in my possession'. In the next letter, written a year later on 5 January 1933, Bryant corrects 'a slight slip' in the proofs of Chappell's edition of Pepys's shorthand letters, which had recently appeared, stating: 'May I say what a great service I feel you have done by these transcriptions: they do add a very great deal both to the Further Correspondence and the Diary, and help enormously to show what a master Pepys was at official correspondence. I think you were very right when you say that his strength lay in fighting defence: the way he marshals and crowds his facts in unassailable array is truly impressive. As an administrator in a small way myself, I can appreciate his skill in this most difficult art all the better. The only fault is that, for all his suavity and tact, he leaves his opponents without the smallest ground of right and human nature is apt to react unkindly to those who are altogether right!' He hopes 'to be allowed some day to look at your Pepys collection and to talk to you, or rather listen to you, about Pepys'. On 2 May 1933 he asks Chappell to read 'the typescript of my Pepys', adding, 'What a strange study Pepys is: I dont know whether I've got anyway near him or not. I think the real secret was vitality a really wonderful vitality that explains alike his great virtues and his equally great lapses'. He asks if Chappell has 'read the missing passages', which he thinks 'help to explain a lot'. He will let him have them if he has not got them, 'for I cannot believe that Turner will be able to print them all'. He would 'also like the N[ational]. M[aritime]. M[useum]. to have my envelopes; if they would think them worthy of acceptance'. He begins a long letter of 5 May 1933 by thanking Chappell for agreeing to a request which will 'be the greatest help to me and will probably save me from many foolish slips and blunders'. He agrees with him that 'Pepys is so vast a subject that one can never feel certain that one has covered all the ground'. He flatters Chappell by stating that it is 'perhaps even pleasanter to know that there is someone in the world who feels as passionate an interest in one's subject as one does oneself. When nine years ago I first started to transcribe the 14.