Beschreibung:

ROSE, William - LITERATURE. The archive of Professor William Rose (1894-1961), comprising autograph and typed letters signed by 20th-century writers, poets, critics, academics and publishers, 1926-1945, most in reply to invitations to contribute to his editions of The Republic of Letters for Ernest Benn's Sixpenny Library and The Outline of Modern Knowledge for Victor Gollancz, and on other publishing matters, together with retained copies of letters by Professor Rose, and letters to Dorothy Wooldridge (Mrs Rose) referring to an anthology of verse, in 3 box files, 2 expanding files and one folder , and including: Letters by: T.S. Eliot (proposing to write on Dante, 'there is about two years reading in the literature of the 12th and 13th centuries to be done'); J.B. Priestley (5, at first declining, 'a man in my position cannot ...', then agreeing); E.F. Benson, A.E. Housman ('I have no talent and fortunately no taste either for literary criticism'); Bertrand Russell, (5, busy with 'The Analysis of Matter', and suggesting B.S. Haldane be approached instead); Max Beerbohm ('I should like to read what Mr Bateson thinks about some essayists of which one is yours truly'); Hilaire Belloc (5 short letters); E.M. Forster, Maurice Baring (13), Sidney Webb (2), Roger Fry (2), Leonard Woolley John Galsworthy (as president of the PEN Club), Edmund Gosse (4), W.R. Inge, D.S. MacColl, Ernest Newman, J.R.M. Butler, Richard Aldington (8, commenting on contributions), John Drinkwater (2), D.F. Jerrold, Basil Liddell Hart, Oliver Lodge, J.A. Marriott, Scott Moncrieff, Robert Bruce Lockhart, Samuel Hoare, A.L. Rowse, G.D.H. Cole, Ernest Jones, J.M. Keynes, Arthur Symons, Edmund Gosse, Walter de la Mare, Edmund Dulac Sir Ernest Benn etc; later correspondence referring to the plight of Jewish intellectuals in Europe, describing internment on the Isle of Man; also publishers contracts, draft prospectuses etc; letters to Dorothy Wooldridge by Siegfried Sassoon, Vita Sackville-West ('Vita Nicolson'), Padraic Colum, Laurence Binyon, Thomas Hardy and other writers; The archive also includes 2 letters signed (one typed) by Sir Ernest SHACKLETON (1874-1922) to William Rose (as editor of The Mermaid ), London (printed heading of 'The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition'), 27 March and 30 May 1914, 2 pages, 4to (paper clip stains), in the first, 'I have only just returned from Norway where I have been testing sledges, food etc', and later promising to write an article. A record of two of the great publishing successes of the inter-war years. William Rose commissioning editor for Sir Ernest Benn and from 1927 for Victor Gollancz, was later Professor of German at London University. An Outline of Modern Knowledge which sold 70,000 copies was the first omnibus edition designed to impart knowledge to the general reader and composed of new material commissioned expressly for it. (5)