Arnold Bennett Manuscripts and Rare Books: A List of Holdings

23. ARNOLD BENNETT MANUSCRIPTS AND RARE BOOKS: A LIST OF HOLDINGS By James G. Hepburn (Cornell) Among the various ways of regarding manuscripts, several concerning Bennett's need to be mentioned. First, only a very small portion of still unpublished or uncollected journalism, journals, and letters is ever likely to be published. Most of this writing was done off the top of Bennett's head; his journals, for example—only one-third of them published—he considered a superficial record of his daily life. Private examination rather than publication of the remainder seems called for. Similarly, several thousand of his letters are merely dutiful filial and social notes, perfunctory business letters, and the like, of which the published ARNOLD BENNETT'S LETTERS TO HIS NEPHEW is a good illustration. But to a few persons Bennett wrote letters valuable in personal and literary respects; some glimpses of these can be seen in the only other extended publication of his letters, the one hundred and seventy letters to Dorothy Cheston Bennett in her ARNOLD BENNETT, A PORTRAIT DONE AT HOME, and in the few fragments of letters to his close friends George Sturt, Frank Swinnerton, and H.G. Wells in Reginald Pound's ARNOLD BENNETT. (The Bennett-Wells correspondence at the University of Illinois is expected to be published this year.) And there are letters to other writers—Conrad, Gide, Maugham, George Moore, Sassoon, and the Sitwells— and to other people that are worth publishing. The case is somewhat different with the manuscripts and notebooks of his short stories, plays, novels, and other literary efforts. Among unpublished manuscripts, there are two full-length plays of Bennett's last years that anyone seriously engaged by Bennett's art might hope to see published. One of them, THE RETURN JOURNEY, was produced unsuccessfully in 1927; I own an acting copy of it. The other was never produced; it is untitled; I have not seen it and do not know its whereabouts, except that it was sold at the Sotheby auction in 1936 (see below). Bennett's manuscripts of his published works present a special problem in understanding. They are neat and clean; their corrections are matters of style rather than of structure or content; with few exceptions, first copies are last copies. These facts might seem to reflect the ease, carelessness, and superficiality so often attributed to Bennett's art, but they instead reflect the meticulously protracted thought which preceded each day's composition. The manuscript of THE OLD WIVES' TALE has been reproduced in facsimile (London: Benn; N.Y.: Doran, 1927). Some of the evidence of Bennett's planning is to be found in the notebooks. These are often very extensive; the notebook for HILDA LESSWAYS, for example, runs to eighty-nine pages; the notes for IMPERIAL PALACE cover more than two hundred. A few of these notebooks were sold at the Sotheby auction in 1936. AMERICAN HOLDINGS I obtained my information from queries to thirty-seven libraries and from checking through AMERICAN BOOK-PRICES CURRENT and U.S. CUMUUTIVE BOOK AUCTION RECORDS. I have made no attempt otherwise to ascertain private individual holdings in this country. 24. I, Libraries 1. Boston Public Library 3 AM: journalism, 1927 (2), 1929 2. Brown University TLS to W. Williams, 1913 Two pages of notes on the flyleaves of a copy of C,W. Ditke's THE BRITISH EMPIRE 3. University of Buffalo TL (carbon) to J. Freeman, 1928 TLS to V. Gollancz, 1927 TLS and APS to H. Munro, 1925, n.d. AM: brief comment on MR. PROHACK 4. University of California, Los Angeles 2 AM: fairly long essays on the novels of E. Phillpotts, 1906, 1926 5. Colby College AL to the editor of the London DAILY EXPRESS, 1928 3 AM: journalism, 1928 (2), 1930 6. Columbia University TLS to W. Carpenter, 1912 ALS to "Dear Sir," 1910 7. Library of Congress 2 AM: journalism, 1927, 1929 AM: story, "Strange Affair of a Hotel," 1928 8. Dartmouth College AM: journalism, 1928 9. Harvard University TLS to R. Grant, 1911 ALS to G. Harvey, 1912 TLS to M. Howells, 1921 2 ALS to W.D. Howells, 1911 TL to "Q," 1925 AM: journal, October 1908...