ELIOT, T. S.
Typed Letter Signed ('Tom') to 'My dear Winnie' (Winifred Myers, bookseller), thanking her for 'very generous and particularly welcome birthday present',
Winnie Myers, legendary bookseller who took over inherited her father, Ike Myers’, business on his death in 1944, was head of the Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association in 1950-2 (the ABA’s second female President), and by the 1960s was selling predominantly autographs and manuscripts from her shop at 80 New Bond Street, trading as Winifred A. Myers (Autographs) Ltd. She was known to be very generous with her gifts, for instance it was ‘Winnie’s custom to present the school [North London Collegiate, her school] with some choice and appropriate autograph item on each Founder’s Day in April’ (Robin Myers, ‘Winifred A. Myers’). Her gift to T. S. Eliot on his 75th birthday was evidently an autograph related to the Romantics, ‘What a very generous birthday present you have given me and how much present it gives to both of us. You know how we feel about Coleridge and all associations to do with him. I think we shall have to have this one framed like the others to hang on our walls … thank you … for your most generous and appropriate birthday present.“ His postscript also mentions Robert ‘Southey’ (and ‘Cottle’s reference’) - ‘I think it adds to the interest of the documents.’
Eliot signs his name familiarly, ‘Tom’, and the rest of the contents of the letter indicate their amicable friendship - he writes about his health, recent illness and travels, and imminent travel to ‘New York on the 30th November’; proceeding ‘thence to the warmer climate of Nassau in the Bahamas where I know at least that there is good bathing and sun-bathing as well. I hope to return to London in March completely restored.’
Folds, otherwise near fine.
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