Beschreibung:

Large archive of letters and articles sent to Alan Benson
Autograph Letters signed, “I’ve just finished my review of Chitty’s Newbolt biography for the ‘Yorkshire Post’. It’s an extraordinary tale”, 1997; “The talk about Bob Dylan being as ‘relevant’ as Keats or Shakespeare has been going on for a long time. Christopher Ricks, in his critical book The Force of Poetry, mounts an ingenious but to me entirely unconvincing defence of Dylan lyrics as poetry. I think it is all part of the post-modern deconstructionist rubbish that tries to maintain that there is no quantifiable qualitative difference between one ‘text’ & another, between, for example, a Shakespeare sonnet and puncture-repair instructions”, 1998 etc.; autograph manuscript & typescript poems (many typescript drafts with autograph corrections), including: Changing Roles, Sheltered Life, The Long Honeymoon, Small Expectations, Night Visitor, Aubade, Poet Tree, On the Run, Lost Properties, Gunpowder Plot, A Bereavement (unpublished); Rough Boys, A Binyon Opinion, Silence, Famous Guest, Growing Pains, A New Pair of Shoes, The Patriotic Musicologist Thinks, Old Wounds, A Modern Pastoral, The Lamb, In a Cold Climate, Snow Joke, Night on the Oncology Ward autograph manuscript & typescript short stories: Feminine Endings, 1998; Lady Lazarus, n.d. etc.; autograph manuscript reviews, obituaries & other material, including: The Testament of Spencer/The Patient by George Macbeth; Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years; Article on Laurie Lee for “The Guardian”, 1998; Authors Take Sides on the Falklands, “I am entirely opposed to our Government’s response to the Argentine annexation of the Falklands...” BBC Radio 3 A Closer Look: Andrew Marvell, typescript, n.d. etc.; books, mostly modern first editions, including: The Fight, 1953; The Face of the Enemy, 1961; The Dividing Night, 1962; The Big Time, 1965; Ring of Truth, 1983; States of Undress, The Starwheel Press, 1984; Extra Time, Charingworth, The Evergreen Press, 2003 etc.; manuscripts and typescripts, many poems in both autograph manuscript drafts and final typescripts, many signed, ephemera, photographs (numerous portraits of Scannell taken in May 1998 by Alan Benson), audio tapes (talks, poetry readings etc.), newspaper cuttings etc., 1997-2005