CORNFORD, Frances (1886-1960). Poet.

Autograph Letter Signed ("Frances Cornford"), to [Daniel] George (of Jonathan Cape, publisher),

4 pages 8vo. Conduit Head, Headingley Road, Cambridge, 8 November 1945, 1945.

£250.00

A long, detailed letter giving an update to her publisher about her progress in translating 20 of Louis Aragon’s poems (“Here is November but my total Aragon bag is only seventeen poems - and three of those, which I accomplished on a recent holiday not quite ready to send to you yet… will you wait for the twenty or have a look at the seventeen”); her desire to write a preface “explaining [her] view of what a translation should attempt”; and mentioning “A” (Aragon himself), liaising with him about “his preface” and hoping that he will link up with her son Christopher when he (Christopher) is in Paris for “his next 72 hrs leave”. She also mentions her desire to dedicate the book “to the memory of Jacques Raverat” (her cousin, the painter and fellow member of the Neo-Pagans (this group also counted Rupert Brooke and Virginia Woolf among its ranks)), and asks whether it would be acceptable (“or is it conceited”). She also mentions Aragon’s “Le Consorit des cent villages” specifically wondering whether it would be suitable for inclusion, writing favourably of it thus, “nearly all the verses are just… strange and exciting names so that my task would be comparatively short”; and “the … verses… have great beauty.”

Also mentions Frida Knight (née Stewart), communist and fellow translator (“she’s a communist like so many of my young friends. She.. wanted to translate one or two of the more political ones for some… communist magazine…”) and retelling Knight’s escape from the Gestapo after the outbreak of the Second World War: “She herself was working in Paris when war broke out, was imprisoned, escaped with another girl and got all the way to Spain and finally home. You may have heard her speak about it on the wireless… I somehow feel she’s earned a special right to translating Free French poetry!”

Cornford’s translation of Aragon was never published, although she had some success with verse translations around this time. For example publishing Poems from the Russian in 1943 (assisted by Esther Salaman) and a selection from the French of Paul Éluard (1950).

Very good condition.

Stock No.
27484