TELEPHONE:
HALIFAX 3418.

8, HEATH VILLAS.
HALIFAX.
YORKSHIRE.

April 28, 1948

Dear Herbert Van Thal,

I hope to get some first-hand advice from northern librarians and booksellers today about the format of CARR etc, and I will write to you again tomorrow.

The modus operandi is as follows. The chairman of the Association of Yorkshire Bookmen (of which I am President at present) is Kenneth R. Davis, who is managing director or something of that kind in the firm of B.Riley & Co, Ltd, 366 Leeds Road, Huddersfield. Rileys are primarily bookbinders, but K. Davis buys books largely for the Dominions, also for the Yorkshire County libraries, etc etc. (Incidentally, and to digress for a moment, I think it would be well worth your while to send him copies of your best books in advance, occasionally. He told me that, for example, on the morning he got his copy of LIFE STORY (which I asked Gollancz to send to him) the woman who buys for the Yorkshire County Library came in and ordered 30 copies.) To resume:

I rang up Davis yesterday and asked his advice about the format. He seemed hesitant, but at once offered to telephone various important northern librarians and ascertain their views. Then a further idea struck him. Today (Wednesday) he

is attending a meeting of Yorkshire booksellers. He offered to find out privately their views, and to telephone me tonight with both sets of opinions.

I feel myself that if these opinions are all decidedly against the proposed format, we ought to give it up. But I do earnestly hope otherwise. I long to see my books in a neat little collected edition. The big fat book seems cumbersome and wasteful to me nowadays. I love pocket editions, and have Hardy, Lawrence, Huxley, Proust, James, V. Woolf etc etc in "pockets" as well as many Oxford Classics, Collins Clear Types and so on. The young student buys these pocket editions, I think. The proposed type for CARR is most clear and legible, and the size of page attractive to me. But if my own northern librarians and booksellers don't like the idea of the pocket format, nobody else will, I'm afraid. Writers whose books don't appear in pocket editions are handicapped with the next generation of young people, I think. I am typing this letter myself as my secretary is absent, and am just throwing down all my thoughts in a rather incoherent fashion. I will write to you tomorrow after receiving Davis' report.

It would be a very good idea for you to come, not only to Halifax, but to Huddersfield, Bradford, Leeds etc when the 4th imp of THE B'S is ready. I wish I

TELEPHONE:
HALIFAX 3418.

8. HEATH VILLAS,
HALIFAX,
YORKSHIRE.

could offer you hospitality, but frankly
at present I can't. My mother's
strength (she is 90 on May 10th)
steadily decreases, sometimes slowly
sometimes rapidly, but always with much
pathos and grief to me. Our old housekeeper
has retired owing to old age. Domestic
help is simply unobtainable here; I have
a daily woman for a few hours and a
"sitter-in" who comes in the evenings
when I have absolutely unpostponable
professional engagements. At the weekends
I am entirely alone in the house with my
mother, and have the housework, cooking and
nursing to do. I am not naturally
domesticated and find all this very
fatiguing and difficult. At the moment,
to crown all, my sitter-in has
tonsilitis! We shall look forward to
seeing you here and offering you some
samples of my cookery (!) but I beg you
in advance to forgive all deficiencies.

Your comments on LIFE STORY gave me
immense pleasure. I am excited and
troubled about it at present, as always
when a book is on the verge of public-
ation. I shall look forward to seeing
your review - where, I wonder?

Yours in haste,

H.Van Thal, Esq.,
36 Great Russell Street,
LONDON.W.C.1