JAMES HENRY Autograph Letter Signed to author Henry Harland

Sale 2609 - Lot 242

Price Realized: $ 1,500

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

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

SAYS OF HIMSELF: "UNABLE . . . TO ANSWER FOR THE NUMBER OF HIS WORDS" JAMES, HENRY. Autograph Letter Signed, to author Henry Harland ("My dear Harland"), in English and French, reporting having sent a corrected proof [probably a contribution to The Yellow Book magazine, edited by Harlan], elaborately apologizing for the rough state of the manuscript, explaining that he has been suffering from influenza, hoping he has recovered from his illness and hoping to see him before Harland departs for America. 6 pages, small 8vo, written on two sheets with one folded; faint scattered offsetting, horizontal fold. Bologna, 21 June [1894-97?]

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

"I posted you my corrected proof at this place yesterday afternoon & I put forth orisons that it may reach you swiftly & deftly. After wiring you a week ago I was prevented from returning to Venice by a nasty little attack of influenza, & I was not sure how long the proof had lain at Casa Biondetti before I was able to get it forwarded thence & look at it--for I lay for 3 days stricken sore with fever. . . . I crawled on here yesterday & gave the best of my muddled brain to the proof & lamenting sore, first, that I wasn't in better form for it . . . & second that I hadn't had my copy again in hand before it went to the printers. . . . If you find the proof too rough a read (though I gave a whole languid day to it,) please don't scruple to correct any obvious bévues--or beviews as I call them. The beastly ponderous elongation you won't, alas, be able to mitigate. Tu l'as voulu Georges Dandin!--voulu, I mean, in applying to a creature constitutionally unable in a drama to answer for the number of his words--& yet constitutionally amiable enough to take in advance an optimistic view of it. However, on seeing the thing in print I find the words pretty words enough & the fault of the thing really is the extreme raccourci of the angle at which the subject is seen. I had, as I read it yesterday, [a] . . . sense of having omitted everything that I had most intended to put in . . . . [T]he end, like all my horrid ends, is too squeezed & hurried. But à la guerre comme à la guerre. I hope you have shed your lumbago in Paris & that if you still criminally intend to go to America you won't be off before I return. . . . . I trust all your editorial sores heal faster than they form."