(WOMEN) Correspondence of Marjorie Crocker Fairbanks

Sale 2473 - Lot 239

Price Realized: $ 1,375

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(WOMEN.) Correspondence of Marjorie Crocker Fairbanks. Hundreds of letters (0.5 linear feet), most in their original folders; generally minor wear. Vp, 1926-63

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Marjorie Crocker Fairbanks (1895-1972) was a figure in art, music, culinary and literary circles from the 1920s through 1950s in both Paris and her native Massachusetts. She was a close friend of the author Tom Wolfe and served as a manager for folk singer Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. This collection of her correspondence covers a wide variety of cultural figures. The sculptor Thelma Wood (1901-1970), best known as a partner of Djuna Barnes, is represented by 37 letters from 1936 to 1947, plus a file of 12 photographs of her drawings. Among Fairbanks's other correspondents were American poet Robert Hillyer (one letter, 1940, and related clippings) French wine writer André Simon (7 letters and related manuscripts, 1948-49) film director Louis b. Mayer (one letter, 1929) and American composer Katherine Ruth Heyman (letter, signed photograph, and concert programs, 1931-34). Several of her correspondents were noteworthy African-Americans; the collection includes 7 letters and related clippings from author and activist Eslanda Goode Robeson (1946-47) A pair of duplicate carbon copies of an apparently unpublished short story by African-American poet Owen Dodson 3 letters and related clippings from Ebony Magazine's food editor Freda DeKnight, 1949-55 A letter on the death of jazz drummer Yank Porter and two snapshots of him, 1944 A letter on the final illness of Lead Belly, and another planning his memorial concert, 1949.