Collection of 59 letters from various authors, most with interesting content commenting on their influences, consisting of both ALSs and TLSs. ALSs are from George Mackay Brown, John Casey, Maureen Duffy, Lawrence Durrell, Walter S. Edmunds, Christopher Fry, Rumer Godden, Gail Godwin, Robin Jenkins, Bobbie Ann Mason, Stanley Middleton, Sue Miller, James Purdy, Alan Sillitoe, James Stern, Richard Stern, William Styron, and Graham Swift. TLSs are from Beryl Bainbridge, John Bainville, Stan Barstow, Nina Bawden, Stephen Becker, Martin Booth, Melvyn Bragg, David Brin, Anita Brookner, Niven Busch, A. S. Byatt, Martin Caidin, R. V. Cassill, David Caute, Alan Cheuse, Isabel Colegate, Evan Connell, Lionel Davidson, Peter Dickinson, Dorothy Dunnett, William Eastlake, Stanley Elkin, Timothy Findley, Celia Fremlin, David Gerrold, Brian Glanville, A. B. Guthrie, Joe W. Haldeman, Mark Harris, Mervyn Jones, William P. Kinsella, David Lodge, Gavin Lyall, Nicholas Mosley, Anthony Powell, Carol Shields, Elizabeth Spencer, Wallace Stegner, John Updike, Irving Wallace, and Jon Manchip White. Stegner’s letter, in part: “I confess I find some contemporary fiction obsessed with both sensation and sex, and wouldn’t want to try to imitate it…When I’m working on a novel, submerging myself in it for several hours a day, seven days a week, I don’t like to read any fiction at all.” Durrell’s letter, in full: “You only have to think of Freud and Charcot or of Proust and Ruskin or of Shakespeare and Marlowe.” In overall fine condition. RR Auction COA.
