MITCHELL, Margaret (1900-1949). Typed letter signed ("Margaret") to the book reviewer and critic Herschel Brickell, Atlanta, 20 October 1937. 3 pages, small folio, single-spaced, on her stationery with name embossed in blue at top of each sheet, holograph postscript, usual folds, with stamped, addressed envelope . "WHITE COLUMNED MANSIONS AND DARKIES SINGING 'OLD BLACK JOE'" "I'd like to see your review of [Ernest] Hemingway's book [ To Have and Have Not ] if you can get a clipping without too much bother. I read an advance copy and, dumb creature that I am, I read it for the story and the characters. Now I read solemn reviews about it which speak at length of profound social implications, sociological portents, et cetera. I seem to have missed them all! I think I need a practicing leftwinger at my elbow to point out to me what is what in modern literature...The Danish edition [of Gone With the Wind ]...has arrived and also the first of the Danish reviews. They are so good that you could knock me over with a cork...The Danish publisher...has offered a prize to his readers -- a trip to New York and five days in Atlanta 'to see the Gone With the Wind country'...our greatest concern is that the winner may not speak English. Atlanta seems as much without Danes as without duck-billed platypusses [sic]. I know the winner will be disappointed if he expects white columned mansions and darkies singing 'Old Black Joe.' I guess I'll have to take him to Bessie's church and let her congregation shout 'Swing Low' for him." Herschel Brickell, a fellow Southerner (from Mississippi), was a noted book reviewer of his day (mid-1920s on) and a one-time head of the trade department at the publishing firm of Henry Holt and Co.; he is mentioned in biographies of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, and Hemingway. In the late 1920s he served on the New York Herald Tribune book section; at the time of this correspondence he was a reviewer for the New York Evening Post . Some of the letters (in this and the following lots) are published in Robert Harwell's Margaret Mitchell , 1976.
MITCHELL, Margaret (1900-1949). Typed letter signed ("Margaret") to the book reviewer and critic Herschel Brickell, Atlanta, 20 October 1937. 3 pages, small folio, single-spaced, on her stationery with name embossed in blue at top of each sheet, holograph postscript, usual folds, with stamped, addressed envelope . "WHITE COLUMNED MANSIONS AND DARKIES SINGING 'OLD BLACK JOE'" "I'd like to see your review of [Ernest] Hemingway's book [ To Have and Have Not ] if you can get a clipping without too much bother. I read an advance copy and, dumb creature that I am, I read it for the story and the characters. Now I read solemn reviews about it which speak at length of profound social implications, sociological portents, et cetera. I seem to have missed them all! I think I need a practicing leftwinger at my elbow to point out to me what is what in modern literature...The Danish edition [of Gone With the Wind ]...has arrived and also the first of the Danish reviews. They are so good that you could knock me over with a cork...The Danish publisher...has offered a prize to his readers -- a trip to New York and five days in Atlanta 'to see the Gone With the Wind country'...our greatest concern is that the winner may not speak English. Atlanta seems as much without Danes as without duck-billed platypusses [sic]. I know the winner will be disappointed if he expects white columned mansions and darkies singing 'Old Black Joe.' I guess I'll have to take him to Bessie's church and let her congregation shout 'Swing Low' for him." Herschel Brickell, a fellow Southerner (from Mississippi), was a noted book reviewer of his day (mid-1920s on) and a one-time head of the trade department at the publishing firm of Henry Holt and Co.; he is mentioned in biographies of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, and Hemingway. In the late 1920s he served on the New York Herald Tribune book section; at the time of this correspondence he was a reviewer for the New York Evening Post . Some of the letters (in this and the following lots) are published in Robert Harwell's Margaret Mitchell , 1976.
Try LotSearch and its premium features for 7 days - without any costs!
Be notified automatically about new items in upcoming auctions.
Create an alert
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
