[One-page ALS from Raja Rao, the award-winning Indian author, to Max Denis, Margaret Crosland's husband]

[RAO, Raja]; [DENIS, Max]; [CROSLAND, Margaret]

Published by Publication Date: 1956

One-page ALS on cream note paper, ocean bond watermark: written in blue ink and a testing hand, and addressed: "Dear Monsieur Denis," with a Hyderabad, India address, plus b/w image to top left corner, and signed 'With kind regards, yours truly, Raja Rao'. Two folds, a few spots, related pen notes, a little creased. Very good. Unusual An enquiring, publishing-related ALS from Raja Rao, the prize-winning Indian novelist and short story writer, to Max Denis, the husband of Margaret Crosland, who appears to have had connections in the British publishing world: Rao opens by letting Denis know "that I have indeed reached India," a recuperative visit which, he hopes, will allow him to "return to Europe a very much more steady person, physically speaking, [where?] I will be able to do a great deal more of the work I want to." He next asks if Denis has heard from Oliver Walker(?): "you remember Margaret Crosland was going over to see him with my Ms of the Serpent and the Rope" (his philosophical novel would be published in 1960 by John Murray). Rao also wonders if he has been able to read "any more of my MS of my other material? I should like to have your opinion of them" and, finally, requests that Denis "be so kind as to find out what Shelley of Sidwick & Jackson has to say about my MS." According to the additional pen notes, either Crosland or Denis replied on 16/1/56 and "S & J [said] no." Considered one of India's earliest and most outstanding English-language novelists, Rao (1908-2006) won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964 for the novel discussed here, Serpent and the Rope. He published in both French and English, having studied at both the Sorbonne and Montpellier University: perhaps where he met Max Denis and/ or Margaret Crosland? Rao also wrote a biography of Gandhi, The Great Indian Way (1998), who had also influenced his first novel, Kanthapura (1938), an account of a south Indian village's response to the Gandhian non-violent civil disobedience movement. Admired by E M Forster, it is "a classic text in Indian schools, hailed as the first literary manifesto to point to an Indian way of appropriating the English language." Crosland had married Max Denis, a French National, in 1950; he seems to have had connections with the British publishing world. They apparently separated around the time of this letter from Rao. From Margaret Crosland's archive. Margaret McQueen 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. Seller Inventory # 3311

Bibliographic Details

Title: [One-page ALS from Raja Rao, the ...
Publication Date: 1956
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author(s)