ROLFE (FREDERICK WILLIAM) 'Baron Corvo' Autograph letter signed ("Frederick Baron Corvo"), to the publisher Grant Richards, asking for the return of "the list of subjects I sent you at your asking last July", 1 November 1900
Lot 295*
ROLFE (FREDERICK WILLIAM) 'Baron Corvo'
Autograph letter signed ("Frederick Baron Corvo"), to the publisher Grant Richards, asking for the return of "the list of subjects I sent you at your asking last July", 1 November 1900
£1,000 - 1,500
US$ 1,600 - 2,300

Lot Details
From the Collection of Dr. Rocco Verrilli
ROLFE (FREDERICK WILLIAM) 'Baron Corvo'
Autograph letter signed ("Frederick Baron Corvo"), to the publisher Grant Richards, asking for the return of "the list of subjects I sent you at your asking last July", one page, in red ink, 8vo, 1 November 1900

Footnotes

  • Grant Richards (18721948) set up his own publishing house in 1897, two of the first authors whom he published being George Bernard Shaw and A.E. Housman. He met Rolfe, 'almost destitute and desperate', in 1899, having 'read and admired the Toto stories, and was eager to consider further works by the same hand' (A.J.A. Symons, The Quest for Corvo, 1934, p. 110). Chronicles of the House of Borgia was commissioned, for which Rolfe was to be paid a sovereign a week for seven months, ten pounds on publication, and twenty-five more should a second edition follow. Our letter hints at the inevitable difficulties over money, control of editing and content that almost immediately began between writer and publisher, before the eventual publication of Chronicles in October 1901. "The list of subjects I sent you at your asking last July" could either refer to proposed new subjects for commissions which Rolfe was already pushing despite being severely behind in his present book, or a list of complaints about corrections suggested by Richards' reader. By March 1902 Rolfe was writing 'By all, to whom I name your name, you are despised, or hated', signing off as Richards' 'ruthless and persequent enemy' (Letters to Grant Richards, 1952, p. 46).
Activities
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