?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 2,000
WODEHOUSE, P.G. Small archive of 8 items, each Signed, or Signed and Inscribed, to Ray Gibbons: Two Autograph Letters * Three Typed Letters * Autograph Note * Autograph inscription * Color Photograph. The letters and note, remarking that he always felt unable to come up with another plot after completing a novel, noting that Wodehouse and [Alexander] Lafone were not at Dulwich College at the same time, critiquing a story submitted by Gibbons, mentioning some London locations in advance of Gibbons's visit, and sending New Year greetings. Together 7 pages, small 8vo or smaller, personal stationery, two on postcards; moderate staining touching signature on March 17 letter. Each letter with the original envelope. The inscription, "I feel very proud to / think that I was at / the same school as / Lafone," written on terminal page of printed program for the Lafone Day Parade, held in London on October 30, 1966. 4 pages, 8vo; short closed separations repaired with cello tape. The photograph, additionally inscribed, "To / Ray Gibbons / with best wishes," half-length snapshot showing him seated while reading and smoking a pipe. Signed and inscribed on verso. 3 1/2x3 1/2 inches; verso stamped in red ink: "Made by Kodak / Feb. 68." Vp, 1966-68
12 December 1968: "I doubt if this story is commercial. I think what is wrong with it is that there is too much retrospection in it. A short story ought to go ahead from the start, where in this one you have your lead character brooding on the past. . . . "You have to make a story dramatic. You can't just announce at the end that a lost letter has been discovered, you must have a scene showing it being discovered, because this is the high spot of the story and simply can't happen off stage." With--P.G. Wodehouse. Typed questionnaire with holograph responses, unsigned, concerning biographical details, e.g., in reply to question about daily cocktail: "Two martinis before dinner." 2 pages, 4to, onionskin paper, written on separate sheets. Np, [25 April 1969] • (P.G. Wodehouse.) Two letters from his wife Ethel to Gibbons, sending her husband's two, evidently heavily-used, wooden and corn cob tobacco pipes and a photograph of her husband [present]. Together 4 pages, 8vo. Remsenburg, 14 February 1968; Np, 10 February 1976.
