Mason, Ellsworth, 1917-2013

Scope and Contents "For your orientation, for what correspondence there might be between yourself and the was-to-be bibliographer, I want to put it on record with you that the circumstances immediately behind his expressed readiness to act according to what I proposed are these."...."It has not been my thought that you should necessarily supply short descriptive comments on my writings. It was my thought in the case of the former person-his name is Walter K. Thigpen-though I perceived...

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"As to what I contributed, what help I gave Walter Thigpen:he came here 3 times."

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"[I note you are doing a paper related to your work on Joyce. I remember: you have collaborated with Richard Elman. For a time last year I was in correspondence with a colleague of his at Yale..."

Scope and Contents "I have perceived in you an intolerance towards the pari passu mode of relations: the drive to go steps ahead, and not treat the relation with another as belonging to a common course. But I was not prepared for anything as extreme as this letter of yours in which you present me, after coming to me about doing bibliographical work in my connection, and with myself, in a fashion, at reasonable hand, with a decision you are making for my good, in my interest - quite dismissing myself as a...

Scope and Contents "I do not respond in kind by accusing you of baseness in what you did to me in that letter, or in in what you do to me in this present one, with charges of disdaining you while trying to cnceal my disdain but doing so 'poorly', and with acting towards you on the spur of dislike oof having impressed on me the importance of my concentrating on my husband's and my work on language-"...."As I have indicated, I was affected by what you did in that letter and closing out...

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"My idea is, that we go on, in a relation with each other, allowing for its being at present attended by some difficulty, inhering in disparities in viewpoint, in certain areas of thought and sensibility."

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"I want to tell you about Focus. I think I have, actually, told you my all about 'Of Others': that I incline very strongly at present to the view that there never was such a book published by the Seizin Press or begun by my organizing labors-"

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Typewritten letter:

"I don't understand 'The Enemy No. 3'. What is that? Perhaps Wyndham Lewis' magazine?"

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"The Len Lye etc. pamphlet: I have only a copy at Cornell - I mean, they have, it is now theirs but restricted from access except by my consent."

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"I'll just say here that I shall plan for your taking on The Private Library article."

Scope and Contents "I am very grateful to you for the xeroxed pages of The Shout; and for the 'meticulous' definition. The American Heritage dictionary is the one I had in mind, but I can make do with what you sent, and well: it provides adequate substantiation of what I suspected: that within a short time, lexicographically speaking, the degenerative process in word-treatment has here got itselg, conveniently for the abuse, officialized."....."I am going to ask you - here, now - to try...

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

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"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...