Margaret Drabble collection
Place Published: various
Publisher: various
Date Published: 1965 to 1999
Binding: No binding & hard cover
Margaret Drabble is an English novelist, biographer, and critic. She was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2008. In 2011, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for “a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature”.
The collection contains 17 items dating from 1965 to 1999 specifically, 6 letters, 5 books, 2 photos, 3 post cards, and 1 sketch
6 Letters, three Autographed Letters Signed (ALS) one with Sketch and Three Typed Letters Signed (TLS):
• ALS to Galen Williams (director of New York City's Poetry Center, launched Poets & Writers), n.d., regrets to say that she does not write poetry, has not the time to go to the post office to send a book.
• ALS to Mr. Hatch, 29 August 1965, re her inability to speak to his students, lecturing every Tuesday next academic year in itself exhausting.
• ALS to Professor William Plumley of the University of Charleston, 27 July 1996, with envelope, re her sketches and drawings. Drabble also encloses a pencil sketch she made of a plant, which she has also signed and dated. • TLS to Alan Pryce-Jones (British book critic, author, journalist, and Liberal Party politician), 4 March 1992, slight tear at the middle, re his reminiscences of Sir Angus Wilson.
• TLS to Peter Ackroyd (English biographer, novelist and critic), 23 March 1996, re a lecture on literary biography to be delivered in Cappodocia (“turning into a lecture on Dickens’s biographers”) and Ackroyd’s friendly review of her biography of Angus Wilson.
• TLS to William Kaula, 25 February 1999, re photo of Lyme and Kaula’s West Country explorations (mentions her daughter, Becky).
1 Signed Photos:
• one photo taken by Mark Gerson, n.d.
2 Signed Post Card:
• n.d., “Thank you for your very kind letter & for your keen reading. I will keep writing! Best wishes Margaret Drabble”.
• Autograph postcard to Peter Ladkin, 29 August 1997, thanking him for his kind letter.
5 Books – one book signed and one with signed post card:
• A Summer Bird-Cage. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962. First edition of Drabble’s first book (a frothy-told story of the rivalry and entanglements of two sisters, Sarah and Louise), red paper boards, slight lean, creased and chipped jacket, designed by Quentin Blake, price clipped, small stain to the first few leaves.
• The Waterfall. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Cream cloth in jacket, slight tear at the bottom of pp. 155-8, otherwise very good.
• The Middle Ground. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Light grey paper boards (slight stain on upper board), quarter bound in black cloth, first edition in jacket.
• Hassan’s Tower. Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Signed copy, number 209 of 330 copies, fine in gold pattered cloth.
• The Peppered Moth. London: Viking, 2000. Purple cloth in dust jacket, fine, with a signed matching post card: “Thank you for your kind letter. I get my ideas from everywhere - the past, the present, the number 7 bus... Best wishes with your own writing – Margaret Drabble”.
Collection on consignment with LDRB.
Item #8479
$1,050.00 USD
$1,409.48 CAD