num_pages: 316
description: The French Novelist André Gide first met Dorothy Bussy in the summer of 1918; it was a chance encounter of the utmost significance for both of them. For both it was the start of a friendship that was to last over thirty years, and of a business relationship of equal duration, since Dorothy Bussy was to translate all Gide's major works into English in that time. And for Dorothy it was the spark of a passion that burned as ardently at the end of her life as at the age of fifty-two. These letters chart the course of a remarkable relationship; since they rarely met, they conversed on paper, and were better able to express the anguish, jealousy, and love (on her part), the concern and circumspection (on his), they felt.The letters are fascinating not only for the personal drams they record, but for the wide-ranging and lively discussion of mutual friends (many in the public eye), of literature in general and Gide's works in particular, of the art and difficulty of translation, and of events that touched them over the years. On an intellectual level that were equals: Dorothy was a Strachey, the sister of a Lytton, married to the French painter Simon Bussy; among her friends she numbered members of the Bloomsbury circle. And she was a novelist in her own right, the anonymous author of Olivia, a book whose neglect and eventual publication are described in these pages.
language: English
title: Selected Letters of André Gide & Dorothy Bussy
titlecomplete: Selected Letters of André Gide & Dorothy Bussy
ratings_count: 3
publisher: Oxford Univ Pr