Château Sainte Claire

Hyères, 14 December 1920

Henry S. Canby Esqr
The Literary Review
New York Evening Post
New York

Dear Sir,

Mrs. Wharton begs that you will excuse her for not answering your letter herself. She has not been well for the last month and has so arrears of correspondence to deal with that she delegates me to write to you to avoid delay.

Mrs. Wharton wishes me to thank you for your letter and to say that, to her regret, she is unable to write the article you ask for, as she is engaged on a long promised book. She asks me to add that she has not received the copy of the Literary Review which your letter kindly announces.

Believe me,

Yours very truly

Secretary.

TELEPHONE BARCLAY 4200

20-24 VESEY STREET, NEW YORK

THE LITERARY REVIEW

New York Evening Post

September 27, 1921.

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
c/o Charles Scribner's Sons,
597 Fifth Avenue,
New York City.

Dear Mrs. Wharton:

I do not know whether you have seen the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post in which we have, for a year past, been endeavoring to present truly critical book reviews and distinguished comment upon current literature. Those who have contributed leading essays to the Literary Review have included John Galsworthy, John Masefield, G.K. Chesterton, St.John Irvine, Sinclair Lewis, Alice Brown, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher. We can only offer for such essays which have run to an average of 3000 words a very modest honorarium of $40 or $50, but nevertheless I am taking the liberty of writing you to ask whether you would not care to write something for our columns. It is unnecessary to say that we should be extremely glad to print whatever you wanted to say.

WRB/MS

PAVILLON COLOMBE

21 October 1921

W.R.Benét Esqr
Associate Editor
Literary Review
New York Evening Post
20, Vesey Street
New York,

Dear Sir,

Thank you very much for your kind letter of Sept. 27th,
asking me to contribute to the Literary Review of the New York
Evening Post.

I have not yet seen a number, but have already heard
of it, and I welcome any attempt to establish a standard of
serious literary criticism in America.

I wish I could express my sympathy by contributing now
and then to the Review, and I hope that I may be able to do so
later; but at present I am taking a long rest from writing, and
when I begin to work again I must Eamptshew several unfulfilled
engagements.

I am glad of this chance to say how much I have enjoyed
and admired some poems of yours, which I have come across in
various magazines.

Believe me,

Yours very truly

TELEPHONE BARCLAY 4200

20-24 VESEY STREET. NEW YORK

THE LITERARY REVIEW

New York Evening Post

November 2, 1921.

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
Pavillon Colombe,
St. Brice-Sous-Foret (S&O)
Gare: Barcelles,
France.

My dear Mrs. Wharton:

Mr. Benét has just shown me your recent letter. I thank you for your interest in the Literary Review and I sincerely hope that later you will be able to write for us. I particularly wished to send you a copy of the number of last autumn in which I had the pleasure of reviewing your "Age of Innocence", the work of fiction which I have most admired among all those published in the last two years, but the number went out of print before I could get my hand on a copy. I am sending you two or three recent numbers, today, so that you may see in general what we are attempting.

MS

Hotel de Crillon

Paris, November 18th, 1921

Henry S. Canby Esqr
The Literary Review
New York evening Post
New York

Dear Sir,

Thank you very much for the copies of The Evening Post which I received a few days ago, and read with interest. It is a pleasure to know that there is a public in America for a review so purely literary, and I thought many of the articles excellent.

I am sorry not to have seen the review you wrote of "The Age of Innocence", and hope it may yet reappear some day.

Believe me,

Yours very truly

29th August 1922

Dear Mr. Canby,

My subscription to The Literary Review of the New York Evening Post seems to have expired, as I have received no number since July 1st.

This is a word to ask you to be kind enough to have my subscription renewed for a year, and also, if I have missed any reviews by Mr. Wilson Follett since the 1st of July, to be kind enough to send them to me.

When I read Mr. Follett's review "The Briary Bush" last winter I meant to write at once to you and to him, for it seemed the first noteworthy piece of American criticism of fiction that I had seen in many years; but I was hard at work, and my correspondence was in such arrears that the days drifted by without my writing. Since then I have read everything he has published in your Literary Review, and I am so much interested in his work — though I still think "The Briary Bush" by far the best — that I should be extremely grateful if you would tell him how much I admire it. He seems to me the only American critic with fixed principles and a recognizable standard in a welter of so-called reviewing.

My congratulations on the Review, but do give us more of Mr. Follett.

Yours sincerely

H. S. Canby Esqr
Editor of The Literary Review
20, Vesey Street
New York.

The Literary Review

OF THE
New York Evening Post

20 VESBY STREET, NEW YORK CITY

HENRY SIDEL CANBY, Editor

WILLIAM ROSH BURNET, Associate Editor

AMY LOVEMAN, Assistant Editor

A WEEKLY MAGAZINE
FOR BOOK-LOVERS

October 20, 1922.

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
Pavillon Colombe,
St. Brice-Bous-Foret (S & O)
Gare: Sarcelles,
Paris,
FRANCE.

My dear Mrs. Wharton:

I am very appreciative of your kind letter of
September 27th. I do not know whether to be more pleased at what
you say of my book or more interested in your own critical opinions.
The Literary Review shall go to you and go to you regularly if I
have to sandbag our circulation department in order to bring it about.
I have your second letter also and I shall be more than pleased to
have an article from you on "Futility". I do not think the book has
been published here yet so that your review will be in plenty of time.
Please let me know if the L.R. fails to reach you. I think I revealed
in my last review how much I was interested in the possibilities of
the next novel that you do. And some day I want to ask you about the
genesis of "Ethan Frome". That story to me is like "The Man Without
a Country" - a unique phenomenon in American literature. Don't you
ever come to this side any more? I hope you do and that some day I
may have lunch or tea with you in New York?

With best wishes, I am

Sincerely yours,

Henry S. Canby,
Editor - Literary Review.

MS

October 31st 1922

Dear Mr. Canby,

I was just about to write to you when your letter came
this morning.

After I had written to ask if I might review "Futility"
in your columns, I received a letter from the author, Mr. Canby,
asking if his American publishers might use as an advertisement
a few lines from a letter I had written to him expressing my
enthusiastic admiration for the book. Of course I could not
refuse, as he is a beginner, and my admiration of the novel is
so great; but if I were to review it after authorizing the use
of the letter it would do him more harm than good. May I there-
fore contribute an article on an other subject later on?

I am glad you want to know something of the origin of
Ethan Frome for I have departed from my usual rule of reserve
and have written a little introduction for the new edition of
it which the Scribners are bringing out next month and hope
you will find there the answer to your question; and I also
hope that I shall have the pleasure of meeting you some day,
either here or in New York, where I to reappear in a
year or two.

Yours sincerely

Henry S. Canby Esqr
Editor
Literary Review
20, Vesey Street
New York City

17 January 1923

H.S.Canby Esqre
Editor of The Literary Review
New York Evening Post
New York.

Dear Sir,

I am receiving the Literary Review regularly now and reading it with the greatest interest and with keen appreciation of the level at which you manage to maintain it. But all this time I am doing it free of charge, and I do wish you would ask to have my bill sent to me, for I cannot find anywhere in the paper the price of subscriptions for foreign countries. Please excuse my troubling you again with this trifle but I do not wish to sponge on so good a review. I don't mind having the bad ones sent to me as a present.

Some day before long, when I get out of my present tangle of work, I hope to send you an article on Marcel Proust whom I want very much to write about, as my admiration for him is unbounded.

Yours very sincerely

20 VERSITY STREET, NEW YORK CITY

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Editor
WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT, Associate Editor
AMY LOVEMAN, Associate Editor

A WEEKLY MAGAZINE
FOR BOOKLOVERS

November 23, 1923.

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
Pavillon Colombe,
St. Brice Sous Foret (S & O)
France.

My dear Mrs. Wharton:

Once you were good enough to say
that if an opportunity offered you might dis-
cuss a book for me. There has just been pub-
lished here a book upon which your comment would
be more interesting than that of any one else I
can think: "Robert Bacon's Life and Letters."
You knew him, of course, and must understand the
background of a great deal in this correspondence.
I am sending the book to you, today, although very
possibly you have seen a copy. If you can write
upon it for the Literary Review, I should be
deeply grateful. It was a great regret to me
that I was in California when you were in this
country, this summer, and so missed an oppor-
tunity of seeing you.

I am, with best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

MS

December 7th 1923

Dear Mr. Canby,

I have your letter of Nov. 23rd asking me to review the
Life and Letters of Robert Bacon. Unfortunately, I am not in
the least qualified for such a task as I hardly know Mr. Bacon,
and am, moreover, as remote as it is possible to be from the
world of diplomatic and international politics.

I should be delighted to send you an article on some
other subject when I have worked my way through a large accumula-
tion of literary arrears.

I was extremely sorry not to see you when I was in New
York in June, but if ever you come to Paris or to the South of
France, do let me know in advance, so that we may meet at last.

Yours sincerely

Henry S. Canby Esqr
Editor
Literary Review
20, Vesey Street
New York.

9 February 1924

Dear Mr. Canby,

I am enclosing a short notice which my old friend, M. Gustave Schlumberger, has asked me to send to the leading literary reviews in America. He has had so many applications from students of Byzantine and mediaeval History for these two unobtainable books that he is anxious to have it known in America that they have just been republished. I am sure that the announcement will be of real service to many of your readers, and am glad to have the chance of sending it to you.

I hope to send you a little article for the Review before the end of the winter.

Yours very sincerely

H.S. Canby Esqr
Editor of The Literary Review
New York Evening Post
New York F.Y.

It will be good news to student of Byzantine History, and of the period of the Crusades, to hear that two works, both notable in their way, and for many years out of print, have just been republished. These are: *Nicéphore Phoaras* (published by Plon-Nourrit & C°, Paris) and *Renaud de Châtillon* (H. de Boccard, Paris), two of the best krown and most popular books of M. Gustave Schlumberger, (of the Institut de France) who is probably the greatest living authority on the history of Byzantium and of feudal chivalry in the near East.

These two books have been so long out of print that their price had soared far beyond the reach of the average book buyer; and their re-appearance is doubly welcome at a moment when archeological research has caused a revival of interest in the history and art of the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades.

13 May 1924

Dear Sirs,

Mrs. Wharton asks me to say that on and
after this date, and until further notice, her
address will be:

Pavillon Colombe
Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt
Seine-et-Oise

At the same time she wishes me to remind
you again of her telegraphic address during the
summer months:

Wharton-Munroa, Paris.

Believe me,

Yours very truly

Secretary.

The Literary Review

15 May 1925

Dear Sirs,

Mrs. Wharton begs you to be kind enough to
address the Literary Review from now on to the following
address:

Pavillon Colombe
Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt
Seine-et-Oise
FRANCE

Believe me,

Yours very truly

Secretary.

Literary Review
20, Vesey St?
New York.