Mason, Ellsworth, 1917-2013

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"I am moved to put on record, as to your appeal for corrections, that some wrong things involve offences that make their repair by those responsible for them morally impossible; penance, however, is always a moral possibility."

Scope and Contents "I have been wanting to write to you on the Madeline Vera matte again...I have had what I think may be a better solution, all-round. You may communicate to Mr. Kirkham that my final view of the matter is that, although he has not had from me any authority for this attrbution, and I regard as regrettable, unfortunate, his proceeding to make attribution on what is first a Higginson-Graves attribution...suggest that he use the M.V reference with this accompanying data in the mention of M.V.:...

Scope and Contents "...as to The Survey copyright: I believe that English law established authorial copyright to the book and I have had the confirmation of this I believe that the English publishers in the late forties returned the copyright to t[h]e authors by way of A.P. Watt."...."You do what many do in elevating normal objection to morally, plaiun morally, wrong doing to a Super-sensitivity...What is there super-sensitive about objecting to the insult Graves' and Hiiginson's and...

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"I am sending you a little present, a little thank-you for much kindness. - The paperback version of the American edition of my Selected Poems."

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"And I wish to ask you whether someone I care to have read the article for its critical usefulness to him may have it to read before publication."

Scope and Contents "There is time, and time for further explaining. It is a strange story! The story of this 'one story only' matter. The person who spotted what he was sure was an appropriation gave me my first knowledge, of R.G.'s taking such a line in a poem of his - & there had been no communication with me before he wrote on this; and other findings of like sort."...."The texts of the Am. & Eng. editions of The Telling are identical. The AM. has the misprint on p. 125...

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"--To note a few things that I have had in mind, pointing in your direction -- I have had a letter from Michael Kirkham as to a number of things of immediate interest between us. He made no reference in his letter to the Madeline Vara matter."

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"It puzzles me that your Private Library issue continues to fail to come to you. Have you written directly the editor, John Cotton?"

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"I must report, however, that I have to give up as to our arriving at a point of common view as to 'loving--kind'. You do not comprehend the sense that I set forth. My sense is exactly in my words."

Scope and Contents "I cannot go any further in what I thought was a practicality of friendship, developing. You have added to your dismissal of my tenderly offered motto for you and your son, as related to formal scales of values and not penetrating to the true nature of loving-kindness, as you know it by special experience, an extreme condemnation of me. You did, indeed, refer to my definition, allowing it some relevance to loving-kindness, but lecturing me on the main substance, as something I had omitted -...

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"I send you (not to be returned) a copy of a letter I have written to the present editor of Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature..."

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"...I had had no acknowledgement of receipt by you of the copy of The Private Library, containing writing on The Seizin press - which I sent to you for loan on learning of long delay in your receiving your own copy."

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"Then, to speak of the Madelaine Vara, etc., matter I thank you for your report on that. How Mr. Kirkham came to recording this attribution without checking with me, remains near-incomprehensible to me, he having been apprised of my feelings on Mr. Higginson's presumptuous assumption of authority to spread such attribution, in the course of the rather long correspondence maintained between us not very many years ago on a wide number of things pertaining to my work."