Mason, Ellsworth, 1917-2013

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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...

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

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"...I report that I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the forwarding of the note-yet completed work on language...and my long-planned book on the 'Failure' of Poetry..."

....

"The procedure you outlined in your letter, of my sending you the item in question on approval, after your being informed of the asking price, and, then, calling for sight of it, is one of which I have never before had experience."

Scope and Contents "I have done some consulting as to the 'asking-price' for the marked copy of the page-proofs of The Telling, and I was given a range though just to the buyer and myself..."...."...I am addressing to you, before any other, a question as to some biliographical matters information on which I need in preparation for an article by myself treating of certain things bibliographical. I have been left vague in recollection as to whether you possess copies of the privately...

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"I am writing as to the first set of page-proofs of The Telling. This is red-ink marked by the editorial supervisor of production, with whom I worked closely, and by myself. But we had worked so much with the galleys that there are only minor corrections registered in the page-proofs. Also, the core-piece of The Telling became unalterably final for me in its magazine-published form--I could not, would not, touch anything - except in correction of a printer's mistake."