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Following William Faulkner's death on July 6, 1962, a memorial broadside distributed by a local newspaper to businesses in Oxford, Mississippi.

Twenty-one lines in Faulkner’s hand, an early alternate text of a key passage in Light in August. This leaf went from Faulkner to Dorothy Parker, who in turn passed it on to Archibald Macleish, who annotated it helpfully in pencil: Faulkner ms given me by Dorothy Parker in 1930 (?) A Macleish.

When Parker met Faulkner through George Oppenheimer, the co-founder of the Viking Press, she was taken with him immediately: “He seemed so vulnerable, so helpless,” she later wrote. “You just wanted to protect him.” 

This manuscript fragment presents an alternate version of a pivotal passage in the novel, providing a fascinating glimpse into Faulkner’s naming of Joe Christmas and his use of Christian imagery throughout the novel. J.C. shares his initials with Jesus Christ; Christmas appeared in front of an orphanage on Christmas Day; the novel has 66 characters – the Bible, 66 books. From the manuscript:

Old Doc Hines the murderer that’s what he’s been and will ever be, because a man lives free in the evil he seen and what he done. ‘Out of come evil a evil come,’ God said to old Doc Hines. . . The Lord’s run both come did 16 give old Doc Hines the chance to wait and watch while evil ground out evil. Finest evil. . .” In this passage, much is made of the orphanage, and the delivery of the young boy to it: “So they named him Christmas Knight because the Madame was away spending Xmas and the doc with lustful Jezebel and them other young sluts was drinking eggnog where the doc had sent them... But the Madame came bored from where she was spending Xmas and so changed his name because Christmas Knight was sacrilege, so they called him Chris and God said to old Doc Hines ‘But that aint it. Because a little child shall lead him.’ So old Doc Hines he watched and he waited. . . and he saw the devil’s own seed began to pollute the evil. . . until one day old Doc Hines heard the other children call him Joe and old Doc Hines asked them why they called him Joe. ‘Jo-Jo the Dogfaced Boy,’ the orphans said. And old Doc Hines asked them why they called him Jo-Jo the Dogfaced Boy, It aint his face, old Doc Hines said. It aint his face because his face aint any darker than some of yours. It aint his brain because his brain aint any ... than some of yours. It aint his eyes because his eyes aint any ... than some of yours. ‘But that aint it yet,’ Gold told old Dic Hines. ‘You watch and wait. Because a little child shall lead them.’ So old Doc Hines he watched and he waited. And one day he heard them. From God’s own book come loudly out, he seen and heard ‘Nigger! Nigger!’ The voices of little orphan children that Knew not sin because it was God’s private one: ‘Nigger! Nigger!’ And old Doc Hines asken them why they called him nigger. But they [ends].

This text reveals a psychological maelstrom with more explicit Christian references, and a more direct involvement of God, than Faulkner settled for in the published version. In the first edition this sequence is changed and expanded, but the naming of Christmas is toned down (and the Jo-Jo the Dogfaced Boy correlation is removed). 

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An archive of enthusiastic critical correspondence and promotional printed matter relating to the 1946 New York premiere – a preview screening – of Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film adaptation of Henry V.

Present are approximately fifty pages of promotional materials prepared by The Theatre Guild, who underwrote the picture; with nearly twenty individual signed letters from prominent figures in cultural circles, including Carl Van Doren, Lillian Hellman, Franklin P. Adams, Guthrie McClintic, Margalo Gillmore, Carl Van Vechten, and others.

Olivier starred in, directed, and produced the film, which was set as a play and performed on the stage of the famous Globe Theatre. A press release describes the event – the “first film ever to be sponsored by the theatre guild” – as a “‘photographed play,’ a stage performance on celluloid until the camera helps the mind ‘piece out imperfections,’ breaking through the limitations of the playing platform to bring to the screen the invasion of France, the exciting charge of the knights at Agincourt and charming love scenes between Harry and Princess Kate.” Though the charm of those scenes – in which Henry woos one of the few French he allowed to live, a bizarrely coquettish and charming young Kate – might be disputed, the enthusiasm of this film’s preview audience cannot. Many apparently saw the composition of their fan letters as the price of admission to the private New York Theatre Guild preview (Deems Taylor mentions at the end of his letter, “I haven’t tried to write a ‘quote.’ Use anything you like”). Unanimously positive, some bits of praise are flat-out exuberant: Margaret Webster comments, “…the running time seemed to go so quickly that it appeared to be much SHORTER than any average picture…Anybody who misses this picture is a dope!”  The archive includes 14 typed letters signed, five autograph letters signed, and one telegram, all except one addressed to Theatre Guild founder Lawrence Langner (one is addressed to Guild co-producer Theresa Helburn), in additional to the producer’s press release and other promotional items.

For more information please email Sarah@glennhorowitz.com

Over 150 first editions, association copies, letters, and more, from an important collection. Including books by both Leonard and Virginia Woolf, their family, and friends. Featuring a lovely copy of their handprinted edition of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, and the black tulip of the handprinted books of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press: the memorial volume Poems by Leonard’s brother Sidney, recently killed in the war. 

Please click here for a digital catalog.

For further information, email Sarah@GlennHorowitz.com

John Steinbeck’s working manuscript draft for Lyndon B. Johnson’s January 1965 inaugural address, greatly at odds with the speech LBJ ultimately delivered. Written on yellow legal paper, Steinbeck’s four-page unpublished speech repeats the concept of the “Great Society” which Johnson had initiated during his campaign the previous year.  With a letter from Steinbeck to special Presidential Consultant Eric Goldman requesting approval of future changes to the speech; copies of Johnson’s Inaugural Address program; and a letter of authenticity from Patricia L. Cooper (“These five pages were given to me by John Steinbeck in Paris in 1965”).

Steinbeck’s speech, which he notes in his letter “is somewhat over the time of three minutes,” begins, “Some there are who think our country is an inheritance, a gift proffered like a sandwich on a clean doily on a silver tray. This is not so. In our beginning we crept, scuttled, escaped, brave and frightened from the safe and settled corners of the earth to a strange and hostile wilderness. Restless energy beyond loneliness and longing drove us to a nameless, inhospitable continent…”

Steinbeck writes about “the Great Society” – the only lines of this draft that Johnson would quote almost verbatim: “The  Great Society, as I see it, is not the fixed and sterile polity of the bees nor the ordered and changeless battalions of the ants. It is the miracle of becoming – always becoming, trying, probing, failing, resting and trying again but always gaining a little – perfectable but not perfect.”

Johnson would deliver this rendition: “I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming – always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again – but always trying and always gaining.”

President Johnson omitted or greatly altered the balance of Steinbeck’s draft. Replete with rhetorical questions, dramatic hyperbole, analogies to running mustangs, and references to a nation’s leader as the “top banana,” Steinbeck’s wording perhaps did not fit LBJ’s oratorical style. Though Johnson would build on many of the themes Steinbeck proposed in this draft (the wilderness, expansion, class), it would be notably tamer.

 

Steinbeck’s autograph letter to Presidential Special Consultant Eric Goldman reads in full:

This is the best I can do in the time given me – do anything you want if you use it anonymously but if it is ascribed to be and you wish to change it, please let me see the changes before use. Of course we both know it will probably not be used and that’s all right too. It is somewhat over the first time of 3 minutes but I will bet it is shorter than any of the prayers. And now I join the ranks
of the loyal, ever the loving Opposition, John Steinbeck.

****

Steinbeck had written Johnson a letter of support on November 22, 1963, following Kennedy’s assassination, offering “profound respect and loyalty to you in the hard days ahead.” Steinbeck also indicated that he and his wife were in Poland, touring behind the Iron Curtain at Kennedy’s request, “talking with writers and with students.” He continued, “Being non-diplomatic, we have been able to observe many things not ordinarily available. And if these experiences can be of value to you, they are freely offered.” Johnson later replied, “Your letter was comforting to me. I am hopeful that very soon I may sit with you and talk about our country.” The following year, Johnson would award Steinbeck the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor awarded for service in peace time.