Mason, Ellsworth, 1917-2013

Scope and Contents

"Have I mentioned that I am writing something on my relations with The Fugitives..."

....

"My poems writing begin to have some continuity when I was a student at Cornell - which I left at the end of my sophmore year..."

Scope and Contents "I had only understood that you, as a person of bibliographical interests, with literary interests attendant on these, and a love of collecting, had made yourself into a collector of Robert Graves' writings. Further, where someone comes into friendly relations with me who has some background of professional connection with the Graves-work subject, I am no censor of the person's past, or unarrestable or irremovable continuance of the past into the present.".......

Scope and Contents "I don't recall any puzzlement of mine about James Reeves' The Natural Need. I worked wit him on this book, over a preparatory period, and gave it its title.""I comprehend your surprise that I should be distressed to the degree manifested at finding you, as prospective writer of something in which I should be intimately involved as an active consultant, to be engaged in this public activity centered in interest in the writings of Robert Graves.""As to Empson and...

Scope and Contents

"It has saddened me, Mr. Mason, to find, by your copy of your letter sent to Mr. Cotton, that you should have been so insensitive to my immediatelyely-reported-to-you consternation at finding you were actively and extensively involved in the public prosecution of Robert Graves interests, as to hear that as, simply, something I must automatically disregard as what is."

Scope and Contents

"I feel with you, in this time of change. I am grateful to you for taking me into the circle of your experience. It is a good story, what you tell; and I am glad for you that you have the happiness of its being, much your own story as well as your father's."

Scope and Contents

"The A.L.S. RIding seems genuine, unquestionably so. The bookplate may be a spoof, someone's inot benevolent idea of a joke, or it may be the token of someone of the 'Riding' family to which A.L.S. belonged."

Scope and Contents

"The book could not have been claimed by Mr. Graves before 1929 as from 1929 to 1939, because from December 1925 to 1939 - well into 1939 - I was in immediate controlling presence to all effects, literary and of other sort, of mine, in the association existing between Mr. Graves and myself."

Scope and Contents

"Mr. Kirkham...informed me that a revised form of his paper might be published in your 'Focus.' I had forgotten that this Gravesian 'newsletter' had this name, and more distinctly than at my first learning of the name (from yourself) I was repelled by the identicality of it with my name for the little private magazine of my editing of long ago."

Scope and Contents "...it seemed to me quite possible that you were acquainted with the past existence of a prive periodical called 'Focus' of my editorship, that your use of 'Focus' for your Gravesian periodical issue might have originated in the coming to your attention of that title, in that setting."..."You address someone, in your account of the importance of your periodical in what you call 'the scholarly community', who regards in a state of literary stupefaction all who treat...

Scope and Contents

"I have a marked set of page proofs of The Telling not committed; I have decided to offer it for acquisition."