Jun 16, 2022 - Sale 2609

Sale 2609 - Lot 239

Unsold
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
"CRITICS WILL TELL YOU THAT WRITING IS INVENTING; BUT . . . IT IS REMEMBERING" HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN. Autograph Letter Signed, "W.D. Howells," to "Dear Friends of the Jefferson School," in purple ink, responding to a proposal to make his life and literary works the subject of study, recalling his early education in Jefferson [OH], and describing how he understands the relationship between life and literature. 3 pages, 8vo, written on two folded sheets; horizontal folds. Boston, 15 March 1881
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"Mr. and Mrs. Arner have told me of your purpose to make my 'life and works' the subject of literary study, and have kindly asked me to send you some word . . . . I feel as if I had been called upon to 'address the school,' and am in the same dismay as if I stood on my feet before you. I hope you are not going to scrutinize my life and works very critically: nobody's life and works will bear it. . . . I knew very well the inside of the old school house, and I can still see the faces young and bright there which you behold grizzled and wrinkled. . . . Some of the boys and girls of that time . . . lie under the chestnut trees from which I used to knock the burs with them, in the first sweet autumn weather that I remember in Jefferson. It was thirty years ago--it was yesterday. As you get on in the forties you will understand that life is chiefly what life has been; and that an author is merely one who has had the fortune to remember more of it than other men. A good many wise critics will tell you that writing is inventing; but I know better than that: it is remembering . . . .
"By and by you will all be authors, or rather you will realize that you have been authors, as you set down for the printed page . . . the history of your life. I hope that history will be for each of you a pure and sweet and good one . . . . Reflect that you are making your book now, in words and deeds, and that the older you grow the more you become merely that book--merely the record of yourself; and keep this in mind as you study other men's books. Be true that you may get the truth from them . . . . Literature is life, and a clean conscience is the best criticism."