Letter from John Crowe Ransom to Richard Wentworth [manuscript] : autograph manuscript signed, 1968 January 13.
1968
Items
Details
Title
Letter from John Crowe Ransom to Richard Wentworth [manuscript] : autograph manuscript signed, 1968 January 13.
Created/published
Gambier, OH, 13 January 1968, 1968 January 13.
Description
1 item
Associated name
Ransom, John Crowe, 1888-1974, sender.
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Place of creation/publication
United States.
Item Details
Call number
FAST ACC 271835 (flat)
Folger-specific note
From dealer's description: "RANSOM, John Crowe. TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS). Gambier, OH, 13 January 1968. A single-spaced two-page TYPED LETTER SIGNED as "John Crowe Ransom" to Richard Wentworth, an editor for LSU Press, apologizing for not responding to a request for early delivery of a new Preface for his book THE WORLD'S BODY, first published in 1938 and reissued by LSU in 1968. Containing over 900 words, Ransom's letter proposes that he instead add a paragraph to the existing preface that points the reader to a postscript which would be an essay on Shakespeare's sonnets. Much of the letter concerns Ransom's thoughts on Shakespeare's sonnets and his sexuality: "I rule out altogether the introduction of Donne as the foil against Shakespeare's style.... I go further than that with Shakespeare, into a feature which has always disturbed me, and in which I have come to have my own convictions. I am referring to the difficulty of fixing upon the real psychological relation in which Shakespeare professes to be bound with his patron.... I should say that Shakespeare is hardly the man to love women and yet to have a homosexual passion for his patron. I think Shakespeare is one of the most normal great men in history, and that he as well as Southampton are perpetrating a great joke, well known to their friends." Much more with a number of ink alterations and corrections by Ransom. Normal creases from mailing, some edgewear. Near Fine. John Crowe Ransom (1888 - 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist, and editor. Considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism, he also served as the first editor of the widely regarded literary journal THE KENYON REVIEW. As an educator his students included Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Allen Tate, Peter Taylor, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, E. L. Doctorow, James Wright, and many others. He won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award." Ordered from Charles Agvent, D 9285, 2019-02-25, email quote.