Day before Thanksgiving

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.
Managing Editor, THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
Baton Rouge
Louisiana

Dear Mr. Warren:

I am sorry to say that I shall need a few extra days of grace beyond the date set in your letter - November 27th - by which contributions for the Winter number were to reach you. I recollect that you or Mr. Brooks said in a letter that I might have an extra allowance of time if absolutely necessary. It seems as if life had been nothing but a series of interruptions for the past three weeks - unexpected out-of-town visitors, ill colleagues whose work had to be taken over, and finally, the death in Quincy, Mass., of one of the cousins after whom I am named, requiring my absence from Hanover for forty-eight hours just when I had arrived at a point to begin the writing of the essay.

Needless to say, I have already begun it. I am remaining in Hanover throughout our four-day Thanksgiving vacation to work on it. I shall send it off on Monday, December 2d, completed, at the very latest. I compose directly on the typewriter; but my MSS are always so revised and scratched-up with alterations and additions, that I invariably have a final draft typed for me by a professional typist. This fair copy, after being proofread and corrected - the corrections seldom running to more than the alteration of an occasional word -, is what I send in; you should, therefore, have no sort of difficulty in reading what I submit. Since it costs but little to have an extra copy typed for me, I will send you the MS in duplicate, one copy by air mail and one by ordinary post; so that no matter what happens, you will have a copy soon after Monday next. I think the MS will run to about 7000 words exclusive of quotations. For these latter, of course, I don't expect to be paid; and if my own wordage exceeds slightly the 7000 mark, you may either omit a paragraph here and there, or simply pay me for 7000 and call it quits. But I am trying to be as terse and economical of space as I can.

4 West Wheelock St.
Hanover, New Hampshire

Hastily yours

Sunday 1 December 1935

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.
THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
Baton Rouge
Louisiana

Dear Mr. Warren:

I send herewith my MS and this covering letter, each in duplicate - the original by air mail, and a carbon copy by regular post, in case of accidents at this stormy season. I write this letter before receiving the final sheets back from the typist, so I don't know exactly how many words there are; but I fear I have exceeded my allowance. As I said, you need pay me for only 7000 words or under, not counting quotations. In case you are unable to print all of this, you have my permission to leave out whatever paragraphs or parts of paragraphs seem to you most dispensable. If you omit portions, I hope you will smooth over the edges of the sentences left on each side of the gap, so that the incision won't be too evident.
I should also appreciate your kindness in letting me have whatever adverse criticisms of the review, _mêxhex_ relating either to content or style, may occur to you.

For one or two statements, I have had to rely on my supposition in default of knowledge. On p. 13 of my MS, I state that you and Bishop and Tate are connected by ties of "personal acquaintanceship." The ties may be those of the most intimate friendship; but not knowing so much, I was not entitled to say as much. The account I give of Bishop's ancestry (p. 16) is drawn from his poem "Beyond Connecticut, Beyond the Sea" in _Now with his Love_. The poem reads like a sober statement of fact, and such I took it to be. If any of this is amiss, I hope you will remedy it. About the use of Mr., etc., in reviews of the living, I have no settled conviction. To omit it entirely with so short a name as "Tate" seems a bit abrupt; to insert it on every occasion seems overly punctilious; to insert or omit according to the cadence of the sentence, seems inconsistent, but is perhaps the least of three evils. However, I hope you will reform my practice, if need be, to bring it into line with the practice of your _REVIEW_.

My MS will probably wander between two styles of typing, and there will at
one or two points be a partially blank page. I am having the MS typed piecemeal,
part by one agency and part by another, hoping that simultaneity of operation at
this stage will lessen the hours, already too many, of delay.

And finally, the Autumn issue is exceedingly good, though I judge as yet largely
by the table of contents. Now that this MS is about to be bundles off to a XXX
milder climate, [signature] I can get around to reading more of it.

P. S. I am not certain of the prices quoted in the bibliographical note at the bottom of p. 1. One other point: I hope the printer will not suppose my underlinings of my alterations written in ink are intended to denote italics. The underlinings are intended merely to shepherd added words more distinctly to the place in the typed text at which they are to be inserted. None of the ink additions are to go into italics.

3 December 1935

R. P. Warren, Esq.
c/o THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
Baton Rouge
Louisiana

Dear Mr. Warren:

Two points occur to me now only after I have sent off my MS. I had
intended in my final revision to insert a sentence or perhaps merely an incidental
clause, explaining the relation of your THIRTY-SIX POEMS to your earlier
PONDY WOODS AND OTHER POEMS. Some readers may wish to know whether the later book
is merely an expansion of the former collection, or whether there is but little
material in common. If you think the point important enough, I hope you will
add a clause or sentence to the MS at any suitable point, conveying this information.

The second point does not concern my review, and I suppose by now concerns
what has either already been remedied, or is beyond remedy. I worked from page proof
of your book, and noticed that on page 46, in the first line of the third stanza of
"Letter to a Friend", the second "u" has dropped out of "superfluous", which in
the proof reads as "sp superflous". And on p. 64, in 1. 13 of "The Garden", the
prrof reads "bold than pure"; but is not "bold and pure / Than marble" intended?
I thought "than" in line 13 might have slipped up from the "than" in the following
line.

Dec. 6, 1935

Mr. F. Cudworth Flint
4 West Wheelock St.
Hanover, N. H.

Dear Mr. Flint:

We have both copies of the essay. Thank
you very much for your forethought, which, I
must say, is very unusual.

Can you let us have air mail as promptly
as possible some biographical and bibliograph-
ical facts about yourself? Your piece is on
the press now, and we are greatly rushed for
time. Further, we want you to do the group
poetry review for our spring issue. Would
you undertake this? The deadline would be
about the end of the third week in February.

I greatly appreciated the seriousness
with which you approached my own collection
of poems, and hope that the book merited the
attention. The poems in the book were written
over a period of nine years, and were arranged
with no thought of chronology. I was greatly
pleased that the ones you seemed to like best
were later ones, belonging for the most part
to the last two or three years.

9 December 1935

Mr. Robert Penn Warren
THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
Baton Rouge
Louisiana

Dear Mr. Warren:

Your letter arrived this morning. I am sending more biographical details than you could possibly wish, partly because I don't know exactly which of them you might like to use, and partly because you may like to have on hand a stock sufficient for any possible future use.

My father, and the cousins whose surname has furnished me my middle name, both are members of old New England families, settled now at Quincy, Mass. The Cudworth house at Scituate, Mass., belongs to the Mass. Historical Society. My mother comes from a Maryland family originally of Virginia; she is a direct descendant of Patrick Henry through his daughter. It was therefore necessary for me to be born on neutral ground, and accordingly I was born in Bellingham, Washington, May 23, 1896. A mile farther west, and I'd have been a fish; a few miles farther north, and I'd have been a Canadian. I was educated in the public schools of Portland, Oregon, and of Salem, Oregon, graduating from the high school in the latter place in 1913. When people ask me my statehood, I still call myself an Oregonian. A year and a half at Willamette University (Methodist), Salem, was followed by two years and a half earning money in the big world. Most of this time I lived in a box car and moved about over the Great Northern R. R. system in Montana, part of the time as an extra gang laborer, but most of the time as a timekeeper for such gangs. In 1917 I re-entered college - this time, Reed College, Portland, Ore. I graduated in June, 1919. The earlier part of that academic year, I was enrolled in the S. A. T. C. unit stationed on that campus. Being very near-sighted, I was intended eventually for the Medical or the Intelligence Corps (or whatever these units are called); but our S. A. T. C. company couldn't afford to give specialized preparations. I was sent out with a

undertake this review, I hope you will remember that I won't be able to deal with
anything which reaches me after the middle of January, because of the circumstances
I have just detailed.

I very much hope the Alcestis Press will let me have a reviewer's copy of your
book, and of Tate's and of Bishop's - for all three of these I worked from typescript
or proof. I shall buy a copy of Stevens', which I did not review because the press
sent me no MS or copy of it. I shall then, I assume, have an entire set of six. Of
course, I plan to keep these, not to sell them. That is one of the chief advantages
of reviewing for a quarterly - the chances are great that what one reviews, one will
wish to retain in one's library. And damn these sentences into which "one" creeps!

14 December 1935

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.
c/o THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
Baton Rouge
Louisiana

Dear Mr. Warren:

Your letter has just reached me, suggesting a review of recent
words
critical books, to the extent of 5,000. This is perfectly agreeable to me; in par-
ticular, I shan't go on at the length I did in the other review, which grew in the
writing of it to an extent I hadn't at all foreseen. I suggest that, if convenient
to you, the Blackmur and Mathiessen books be sent me at this address: F. C. Flint,
47 Saville Avenue, Quincy, Mass.; the rest of the books can be sent to my usual addres5
given at the close of this letter. We have a Christmas vacation of eighteen days,
beginning Dec. 19th; and most of this vacation I spend in Boston and New York City.
I shall be at the foregoing address until about Dec. 27th; if the two books you
mention could be sent there, I should be able to get through them during the vacation,
They - together with Tate's book - sound to me on a priori grounds as the more im-
portant among the lot. (I have read some parts of Blackmur's book which
have appeared serially, and have looked into Mathiessen's book; but I
shall naturally wish to
read them in toto.)

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23 February 1937

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.
c/o THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Dear Warren:

Herewith a group review of eleven of the fourteen books I received. I am sorry about my error. I am sorry I did not get around to all of them; or rather, I all except one. Unequal to Song by Charles Martin, published by Stackpole Sons, seems to be a "retreat into a nunnery" story - a kind of tale to which I find it difficult to do justice. But on looking at the dust-cover, I find it is also a Cajin-populated book; and there's been enough talk recently about Cajins to make me wonder what a Cajin is. Dorothy (Doubleday, Doran) McCleary's Naked to Laughter I left out for the sole reason that I didn't get around to it; it's seemingly of quite as much consequence as some of the books I did review. And The Grown-Ups (I think that's the title; I've not yet opened the carton) arrived so much later than all the rest of the books, that I felt it would not be fair to open the parcel so nicely boxed by Random House, and pass over books even the latest of which had arrived at least a week sooner - even though this is one of the books I should most have preferred to read. I shall forward these three volumes to any address you indicate, as soon as I receive from you the appropriate directions. And should I myself write to the three publishers, stating that their books are held over for later review? (I have received a letter from Random House covering their sending of The Grown-Ups.) Or will that be otherwise attended to?

Perhaps it's just as well that I have not been able to get through the three other books, for I find that my review has run to 9000 words, exceeding the limit you set. I should like a frank opinion from you stating whether you think the review over-written - that is to say, needlessly detailed in its discussion of books, none of which, probably, is anything near a masterpiece. Incidentally, I did of course carry out my regular practice - I read every word of the books I reviewed - and they were

2

the longest of the batch; I got through the 700-pager, the 550-pager, and the 400-pagers first; so that the three books left over do not represent 3/14ths of the total, as they appear to do. And when I had made up my mind about each, I read all the material on paper flaps and inserted documents, intended to cajole reviewers. But to resume: if you wish to shorten this review, you can easily do so by altering a few words at and near the beginning of the second paragraph so as to obviate the first paragraph. Or you could even cut off all the general reflections at the beginning of the article - and, of course, the short closing paragraph, which refers back to the beginning. This would be a quite drastic amputation, however; I should be sorry to see all my general sentiments swept aside.

I am sending the typed copy by express, with the original of this letter. I am sending a carbon copy of both by air mail, if this doesn't prove too expensive. The latter will probably reach you first; but because the carbon copy is on thinner and hence lighter paper, and because the air mail isn't so certain as express, I trust the heavier original to the cheaper and safer means of transport.

10 April 1937

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.
The Southern Review
Baton Rouge
Louisiana

Dear Mr. Warren:

I wish first to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of the cheque
for my fiction chronicle in your last issue. Secondly, I write to ask what I shall
do with the three books which I did not have time to read. These are:

Dorothy McCleary's *Naked to Laughter* - Doubleday, Doran. 1937
Charles Martin's *Unequal to Song* - Stackpole Sons. 1936
Catharine Whitcomb's *The Grownups* - Random House. 1937

I shall be glad to send these on to any person you designate; or to return them to their several publishers, with or without covering explanation. It would not be fair to leave the publishers supposing that the omission of these books from my review was a tacit judgment on their contents, for the omission of these particular three was due, for the first two, primarily to their relative brevity; and for the third, to lateness of arrival. But I didn't know whether, in the event that the next reviewer is not to have these books, you would care to make this explanation yourself, or would prefer to have me make it. I shall also be glad to write these three publishers to explain the delay, supposing that I send these books to your next reviewer.

Looking back from a little distance on the books I reviewed, I feel more strongly
now than I did at first that, by and large, they were fairly *un*important. I wonder
whether my review seems to you to give them an undue air of importance, and by so
doing, to compromise the standards of your department of reviewing. I am somewhat
uneasy on this point myself.

I can't seem to discover at what *time* my subscription *has* expired or will
expire; I therefore enclose a cheque, to continue my subscription from whatever
*date* point is correct, for one more year.

4 West Wheelock Street
Hanover, New Hampshire

13 April 1942

Professor Cleanth Brooks
c/o The Southern Review
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Dear Brooks:

I write you about two quite unrelated matters.

The first is that I have sent off, addressed to the president of
your university, a letter reading: "It is with concern that the undersigned members
of the faculty of Dartmouth College learn of the possibility that THE SOUTHERN
REVIEW may suspend publication. We recognize the need for stringent economies in
the difficult times before us. We believe, however, that the services rendered to
independently democratic thinking and to the best elements in our American culture
by THE SOUTHERN REVIEW have been exceedingly valuable, and that money devoted to its
maintenance is eminently well spent. We therefore respectfully urge that THE SOUTHERN
REVIEW be continued as a part of the contribution of the Louisiana State University
to the public welfare."

This letter was signed by the following members of the department of

English:

F. Cudworth Flint
Stearns Morse
Hewette E. Joyce
Sidney Cox
John Finch
J. W. Egerer
Arthur E. Jensen
James Dow McCallum
Eric P. Kelly

George L. Frost
Benfield Pressey
David Lambuth
Thomas H. Vance
Allan Macdonald
John Hurd Jr.

and by the following member of the department of philosophy:

Philip Wheelwright.