[Rarebooks] FS: Archive of Letters by Sinclair Lewis to Selden Rodman

[Charles Agvent]

LEWIS, Sinclair. ARCHIVE of 3 TYPED LETTERS SIGNED (TLSs) and 1 
AUTOGRAPHED LETTER SIGNED (ALS) to critic Selden Rodman. Fine group of 
letters from Lewis SIGNED in full to critic Selden Rodman. Two of the 
letters are brief social exchanges. Another is a two-page typed letter 
dated 22 October 1930 from Vermont. In part: "I'm delighted by the 
HARKNESS HOOT [Yale University campus magazine co-founded by Rodman in 
1930]. I'm sure that whether it lives to be a grand old Etruscan ruin 
like the LIT. [THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE, the oldest literary magazine 
in the United States], or whether it lasts only a few years, it will 
have an -- no, I won't say an 'enlivening' but rather, a maturing effect 
on the (decreasingly) immature mind of Yale. I was once on the LIT.; I 
know what your revolt must have been." Lewis then expounds on co-founder 
William Harlan Hale's essay in the first number of the magazine, "Twenty 
or Over," saying that he thinks Hale "is wrong in saying that 'the 
literary movement begun a decade ago by Lewis, Dreiser, Anderson, and 
Mencken.....a movement of disillusioned intellectuals.....its spiritual 
father was the war.' In the first place, Mencken and Dreiser or Anderson 
and Lewis have about as little in common as Cabell and Willa Cather. In 
the second place, I don't think the war was the spiritual father of any 
of these -- certainly it wasn't of Dreiser. His SISTER CARRIE was 
published, first, thirty years ago, in 1900! -- and it is characteristic 
of all his work." The one-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER, from Austria, dated 9 
December [1932], regards Rodman's initiating the magazine COMMON SENSE. 
In full: "Good luck to your magazine. But I haven't much optimism for 
it. I have seen far too many new periodicals started of late. And I 
don't see anything in your program that won't, between them, already be 
covered by NATION, NEW REPUBLIC, + NEW MASSES. But I shall be delighted 
if you prove me wrong." Accompanied by two envelopes hand addressed by 
Lewis. Both long letters are scorched in the margins to varying degrees, 
the handwritten one with some loss of letters. Both envelopes are also 
scorched. Condition ranges from Fair to Near Fine.

Selden Rodman was a prolific writer of creative and critical works, an 
editor of several important anthologies, and a co-editor of the 
socialist magazine COMMON SENSE. We in years past had a collection of 
letters from Robert Lowell to Rodman that also showed signs of surviving 
a fire. (#019823)       $2,000

https://www.charlesagvent.com/pages/books/019823/sinclair-lewis/archive-of-3-typed-letters-signed-tlss-and-1-autographed-letter-signed-als-to-critic-selden-rodman

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