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Auction archive: Lot number 47

MITCHELL, MARGARET, Author . Thirteen autograph letters signed, one autograph postcard signed, one autograph note signed ("Peg"), to Henry Love Angel, her childhood friend and suitor, various places (Atlanta, Birmingham, etc.), various dates (Spring ...

Auction 21.04.1997
21 Apr 1997
Estimate
US$30,000 - US$50,000
Price realised:
US$32,200
Auction archive: Lot number 47

MITCHELL, MARGARET, Author . Thirteen autograph letters signed, one autograph postcard signed, one autograph note signed ("Peg"), to Henry Love Angel, her childhood friend and suitor, various places (Atlanta, Birmingham, etc.), various dates (Spring ...

Auction 21.04.1997
21 Apr 1997
Estimate
US$30,000 - US$50,000
Price realised:
US$32,200
Beschreibung:

MITCHELL, MARGARET, Author . Thirteen autograph letters signed, one autograph postcard signed, one autograph note signed ("Peg"), to Henry Love Angel, her childhood friend and suitor, various places (Atlanta, Birmingham, etc.), various dates (Spring 1920 to 20 September 1922, some dated by postmarks). Together 38 pages, small folio, 4to and 8vo, written in pencil and ink, one letter on Mitchell's personal stationery with art-deco "MMM" monogram, another on printed letterhead of The Birmingham News, another on lined notebook paper, with 9 original envelopes . [ With :] Two printed invitations, each with unused reply cards and return envelopes, inviting Angel to the weddings of Courtenay Ross and Helen Turman (both members of Mitchell's and Angel's circle of friends). NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTERS FROM THE AUTHOR OF Gone With the Wind TO HENRY LOVE ANGEL, AN UNSUCCESSFUL SUITOR In her childhood, Margaret M. Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind , formed a close bond with two young Atlanta neighbors, Courtenay Ross (whose name Mitchell used for the heroine in her 1916 novel, Lost Laysen ) and Henry Love Angel. The trio of friends, who christened themselved "The Dirty Three," often acted out plays written by Mitchell, whose literary talents became evident at an early age. Angel, an amateur photographer, took a series of photographs documenting this circle of friends as they matured from adolescence to adulthood (several are reproduced here, courtesy of The Return to Tara Museum of Atlanta). Mitchell's later biographers said very little of Angel; only that he had been among Mitchell's suitors before her marriage to Red Upshaw in 1922. Almost nothing, therefore, was known of the relationship between Mitchell and Angel until the discovery in 1995 of the present cache of letters. Mitchell had given Angel the manuscript of her 1916 novel Lost Laysen , today the only other surviving piece of fiction by the author. (The novel and letters were edited with commentary by Debra Freer in 1996.) These new letters are not precisely love letters, but rather express the profound changes in Mitchell's and Angel's feelings for one another as they moved beyond their childhood affection for each other into mature relationships outside their old circle. Throughout this correspondence it becomes increasingly apparent that Mitchell had no intention of ever marrying Angel, in spite of his repeated proposals, though she obviously cared very deeply for him. Letter 1, Summer 1920 : Mitchell cajoles Angel into making apologies for her at a dance she cannot attend: "...Make it plain to them how I hate not to be able to come and dance but honestly, old dear, as I'm feeling a little better it would be foolish for me to jeopardize my chance of recovery...You lay it on thick for me -- won't you?...I've read up everything in the house and sewed up everything too...This is just to tell you I'm thinking of you.." Letter 2, [24 August 1920] . Mitchell is leaving for North Carolina: "Well, Angel, I'm off at last. Two groaning suitcases, one million golf clubs (not mine...a raincoat, a bushel of magazines and my own unimportant little self...I've been sitting here thinking...and just wondering too, exactly why you went to all that trouble to extract that information from him [a mutual friend] when you could have asked me and I'd have told you whatever you wanted to know...I'm not saying anybody fibbed, but...Either you didn't tell me all he said -- or he didn't tell you the whole truth...Either he's stinging me -- or you -- or you're holding out on me..." Letter 3, n.d., 11:30 p.m. . A striking letter, written in a train, strongly suggesting a scene in Gone With the Wind : "I can't sleep, seems as if I'll go crazy lying here in the dark, listening to the click of the wheels...A while back, we stopped for a long time at a station, I don't know where. As I rolled over to look out the window, I spied something on the platform that made me sit up. It was an 'overs

Auction archive: Lot number 47
Auction:
Datum:
21 Apr 1997
Auction house:
Christie's
New York, Park Avenue
Beschreibung:

MITCHELL, MARGARET, Author . Thirteen autograph letters signed, one autograph postcard signed, one autograph note signed ("Peg"), to Henry Love Angel, her childhood friend and suitor, various places (Atlanta, Birmingham, etc.), various dates (Spring 1920 to 20 September 1922, some dated by postmarks). Together 38 pages, small folio, 4to and 8vo, written in pencil and ink, one letter on Mitchell's personal stationery with art-deco "MMM" monogram, another on printed letterhead of The Birmingham News, another on lined notebook paper, with 9 original envelopes . [ With :] Two printed invitations, each with unused reply cards and return envelopes, inviting Angel to the weddings of Courtenay Ross and Helen Turman (both members of Mitchell's and Angel's circle of friends). NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTERS FROM THE AUTHOR OF Gone With the Wind TO HENRY LOVE ANGEL, AN UNSUCCESSFUL SUITOR In her childhood, Margaret M. Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind , formed a close bond with two young Atlanta neighbors, Courtenay Ross (whose name Mitchell used for the heroine in her 1916 novel, Lost Laysen ) and Henry Love Angel. The trio of friends, who christened themselved "The Dirty Three," often acted out plays written by Mitchell, whose literary talents became evident at an early age. Angel, an amateur photographer, took a series of photographs documenting this circle of friends as they matured from adolescence to adulthood (several are reproduced here, courtesy of The Return to Tara Museum of Atlanta). Mitchell's later biographers said very little of Angel; only that he had been among Mitchell's suitors before her marriage to Red Upshaw in 1922. Almost nothing, therefore, was known of the relationship between Mitchell and Angel until the discovery in 1995 of the present cache of letters. Mitchell had given Angel the manuscript of her 1916 novel Lost Laysen , today the only other surviving piece of fiction by the author. (The novel and letters were edited with commentary by Debra Freer in 1996.) These new letters are not precisely love letters, but rather express the profound changes in Mitchell's and Angel's feelings for one another as they moved beyond their childhood affection for each other into mature relationships outside their old circle. Throughout this correspondence it becomes increasingly apparent that Mitchell had no intention of ever marrying Angel, in spite of his repeated proposals, though she obviously cared very deeply for him. Letter 1, Summer 1920 : Mitchell cajoles Angel into making apologies for her at a dance she cannot attend: "...Make it plain to them how I hate not to be able to come and dance but honestly, old dear, as I'm feeling a little better it would be foolish for me to jeopardize my chance of recovery...You lay it on thick for me -- won't you?...I've read up everything in the house and sewed up everything too...This is just to tell you I'm thinking of you.." Letter 2, [24 August 1920] . Mitchell is leaving for North Carolina: "Well, Angel, I'm off at last. Two groaning suitcases, one million golf clubs (not mine...a raincoat, a bushel of magazines and my own unimportant little self...I've been sitting here thinking...and just wondering too, exactly why you went to all that trouble to extract that information from him [a mutual friend] when you could have asked me and I'd have told you whatever you wanted to know...I'm not saying anybody fibbed, but...Either you didn't tell me all he said -- or he didn't tell you the whole truth...Either he's stinging me -- or you -- or you're holding out on me..." Letter 3, n.d., 11:30 p.m. . A striking letter, written in a train, strongly suggesting a scene in Gone With the Wind : "I can't sleep, seems as if I'll go crazy lying here in the dark, listening to the click of the wheels...A while back, we stopped for a long time at a station, I don't know where. As I rolled over to look out the window, I spied something on the platform that made me sit up. It was an 'overs

Auction archive: Lot number 47
Auction:
Datum:
21 Apr 1997
Auction house:
Christie's
New York, Park Avenue
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