[ilds] (no subject)

[mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org]

I AM NOT SURE WHETHER THIS MESSAGE REACHED YOU, AS IT HAS NOT APPEARED IN MY INBOX 
-----Original Message-----
From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org [mailto:mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 04:31 AM
To: ilds-owner at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Durrell-Miller letters

Our secretary contacted Clouds Hill Books, asking for the provenance of these letters, and she received the following reply, which seems to settle the matter. (I still think some of them 'sound' too much like Larry being Larry.)
RP


""""Dear Ms. Vlachou,

Thank you very much for your interest in the collection of Lawrence Durrell letters to Henry Miller that we are currently offering for sale. Please see the attached file for details on the content and number of the letters in the collection.

The letters originate from Henry Miller’s personal archive, which was first offered for sale by his children in the early 1990s. When the archive failed to sell en bloc the decision was taken to break it up in a series of sales held at Pacific Book Auctions in the mid-1990s. As a consequence of this, the majority of the archive was sold in individual lots to private collectors. The Durrell letters were acquired at that time by the Canadian collector Robert Shulman. I asked Mr. Shulman a few years ago what would be the asking price if he were to sell the letters and he quoted me $57,500 for the archive. I thought the content of the letters was excellent but the price too high, so I declined his offer. Unfortunately Mr. Shulman passed away recently and the ownership of the letters transferred to his wife Sharon. I acquired some Tenneessee Williams playscripts from Sharon earlier this year, and after that transaction was completed I asked if she would reconsider the price of the Durrell letters. She has now agreed to sell the letters for $17,500 which, given both the content and the strength of the association between two such significant authors, I consider to be much more reasonable.

To the best of my knowledge, only four of the letters have been published – items 3, 4, 5 (and this only partially, omitting Durrell’s comments on Erica Jong) & 12 in the catalogue – which all appear in The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80, London: Faber & Faber, 1988, edited by Ian S. MacNiven."""



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20151113/ad5258c3/attachment.html>