Henry S. Canby
The Saturday Review
— of LITERATURE

236 E. 39th Street, New York City

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Editor

WILLIAM ROSE BENET, Associate Editor

AMY LOVEMAN, Associate Editor

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY, Contributing Editor

TELEPHONE
Vanderbilt 7598

July 17, 1924.

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
Pavillon Colombe,
St. Brice-Sous-Foret,
France.

Dear Mrs. Wharton:

Thanks for your kind letter. I am very much pleased that you propose to do a brief article for me, and if I can open the fall season of "The Saturday Review," in September, with it, I shall be particularly pleased. You will be glad to hear, I know, that we are getting an excellent start; in fact our subscribers and advertisers are doing so well by us that I am fearful only of the ability of the editors to supply enough text. I hope to make it a good deal better magazine than the Literary Review, hence the urgency of my requests to writers like yourself.

Yes, I think there are plenty of American-born reviewers for American-written books. The trouble is that some of them are very lazy.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Henry S. Canby,
Editor-The Saturday Review.

MS

6 November 1924

Dear Mr. Canby,

I want to congratulate you on "The Saturday Review", which seems to me to have made an excellent début. I hope you will forgive my not keeping my promise to send you an article last summer; I was suddenly asked by the editor of the Pictorial Review, who is publishing my new novel serially, to give him the book three or four months earlier than I had promised, and as he was in difficulties, owing to another serial having failed him, I could not well refuse and this made other work impossible.

I hope you will find place for a short article in the course of the winter, and will send it as soon as I can.

Yours sincerely

8 January 1925

Dear Sirs,

Till further notice kindly address The Saturday
Review of Literature to:

Mrs. Wharton
Sainte-Claire du Chateau
HYERES
(Var)
France.

instead of to;

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

Believe me,

Yours very truly

Secretary.

Mr Canby

29 August 1925

Dear Sir,

Mrs. Wharton asks you to excuse her for not answering
your note herself. She has not been very well for the last fort-
night, and is just leaving to take a month's rest, but will be
back in October.

She is sorry that she cannot send you a message for
publication in the Review, but she has been advised to stop work
altogether for a few weeks. On her return she hopes to be able
to send you an article called "The Great American Novel".

The Saturday Review
of LITERATURE

25 West 45th Street, New York City

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Editor
WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT, Associate Editor
AMY LOVEMAN, Associate Editor
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY, Contributing Editor

Telephone
Bryant 4458

September 20, 1928.

Dear Mrs. Wharton:

I must tell you how thoroughly I liked "The Children" which I think to be among your really important studies of American social problems. I am glad that you wrote it. I am writing, too, to remind you of your promise to give "The Saturday Review" an essay in criticism. I wish I could persuade you to do what I think every author of mature experience ought sometime to do for the benefit of his or her audience, that is, to sum up personally, or impersonally, the idea of what fiction can do for life, where its real strength lies and (if the article is to be personal as it really should be) where interest centers. This last is surely the most important, for I suppose it is what we instinctively want-rather than what we rationalize-that is important in art and constitutes real evidence. Can't I persuade you to do for the Review a sweeping, if brief, literary essay of this kind, say, in 3500 to 4000 words? We should be glad to offer an honorarium of $150. Please say that you will.

I hear of your welfare occasionally through my friend,
Rutger Jewett.

Mrs.Edith Wharton,
Pavillon Colombe Saint-Brice,
Sous Foret,
(Seine et Oise)
FRANCE.

17 October 1928

Henry S.Canby Esqr
Editor
The Saturday Review
25, West 45th Street
New York

Dear Mr. Canby,

Many thanks for your kind note. I am so glad you like "The Children", for I never wrote a novel with more pleasure to myself, and I hoped so much that I had been able to communicate it to my readers.

With regard to an article for the Saturday Review, I want very much to do one later, but at present I am too much entangled in work long since promised. Please let me not make a date as yet, but be sure that some day an article will arrive.

Yours sincerely

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Editor

AMY LOVEMAN, Managing Editor

WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT, Contributing Editor

CHRISTOPHER MORELY, Contributing Editor

September 12, 1933.

Dear Mrs. Wharton:

I respect your judgment so much and have seen it expressed so little in recent criticism that I wish to try to persuade you to write some time this autumn for "The Saturday Review" a brief article, say, 2000 to 2500 words in which those opinions which must have been maturing in your mind as to the essential artistic and literary value of the American fiction such as Hemingway's, Faulkner's and Wolfe's which has been making so much noise over here would get some issue. I see the local significance of these books and I see their vigor. I am doubtful about their quality as works of art though I have my own opinion as to some of them. There is so much social criticism going on here and so few estimates from the point of view of skilful and matured artists that I think you would be doing a real service to readers if you would set down your estimate as a critic and a craftsman, particularly as a craftsman. We are still hard up over here and I can offer you an honorarium of only $75 but I think the task may be its own rewarding and the attention it will receive will be considerable.

I am just back myself from four months' abroad, unfortunately in England and central Europe but not in France where I would have given myself the pleasure of calling upon you.

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
Pavillon Colombe,
Saint-Brice-Sous-Foret,
(Seine et Oise)
FRANCE.

Octobre 13th, 1933

Dear Mr. Canby,

Yes, I shall be very glad to give you an article more or less on the subject that you suggest; I say "more or less" because I would rather deal with modern fiction in a general way than write anything like a study of one or two given authors.

If you like I should probably be able to send you two articles, one to be called "Documentation" and the other "Values in Fiction". I will try to send you one by the end of the year and the other in the course of the winter, if this is not too remote.

I am sorry that I did not see you when you were last abroad, but do let me know next time and come and see my garden here.

December 28th, 1933

Dear Mr. Canby,

I enclose herewith my first article and hope to
send you the second next month. I have changed the
titles of both: the second will be called: "Permanent
Values in Fiction".

Yours very sincerely

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Editor

AMY LOVEMAN, Managing Editor

January 11, 1934.

Dear Mrs. Wharton:

I find your article significant
and extremely interesting and most sympathetic
to my own point of view. I shall publish it in
two or three weeks, announcing both articles
and following up with the second as soon as it
arrives. It happens that we are just publishing
an anthology of the most representative things
that have appeared in "The Saturday Review," in-
cluding essays by Santayana, Strachey, and many
others. I cabled you this morning asking per-
mission to reprint this excellent article in the
Anthology which will probably be out in March.
The copyright, of course, will be preserved for
you.

With many thanks, I am

Mrs. Edith Wharton,
Sainte-Claire Le Chateau,
Hyeres (Var)
France.

February 18th, 1934

Dear Sir,

Mrs. Wharton asks me to tell you that she is
very sorry not having been able to send you sooner
the second article which you asked for. She is at
work at it now, and hopes to forward it in another week
or ten days.

Believe me,

Yours very truly

Secretary.

Mr. Canby

March 15th, 1934

Dear Mr. Canby,

I am sorry to send you this article so much
later than I had intended, but apart from my literary work,
various domestic problems have occupied my time.

I fear you will be disappointed at my not having
dealt individually with the work of more of the younger writers;
but it was impossible to do so in such a limited space, and in
any case I am not a professional critic, and if I were to say
what I think of a good many of the younger writers, I should be
regarded simply as a novelist of the old school incapable of
understanding the new generation.

Yours sincerely

Henry S. Canby Esqr
Editor of the
Saturday Literary Review
25, West 45th Street
New York.