About three years ago, New York lawyer John Quinn, 51, had helped to negotiate a contract for an American poet living in London, T. S. Eliot, then 30, with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for the publication of his Poems. Eliot had felt that the original contract advantaged the publisher more than the published. Quinn was glad to do it; he advised Eliot that he was well-known enough now to secure the services of a literary agent and hadn’t heard from him since.
Poems by T. S. Eliot, UK edition
Through their mutual friend, another American poet living abroad, Ezra Pound, 36, Quinn knows that Eliot is working on a “big” poem, probably his best work.
Today, Quinn receives a telegram from Eliot in London:
DISSATISFIED LIVERIGHTS CONTRACT POEM
MAY I ASK YOUR ASSISTANCE APOLOGIES WRITING ELIOT”
Quinn cables back right away:
GLAD TO ASSIST EVERY WAY POSSIBLE YOUR CONTRACT”
The second cable he sends today is to his Irish friend, poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, just turned 57, who has written to ask if he may dedicate his memoirs to Quinn:
Yeats
Ballylee
Gort
County Galway
Ireland
GREATLY TOUCHED AND DELIGHTED YOUR SUGGESTION
DEDICATION MEMOIRS.
GLADLY ACCEPT THO PERSONALLY FEEL LADY GREGORY DESERVES
THAT HONOR MUCH MORE THAN I.
(Signed)
QUINN”
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and also in print and e-book formats on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
This month I am talking about the Stein family salons in Paris before and after The Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Carnegie-Mellon University.
In the fall, I will be talking about the centenary of The Waste Land in the Osher programs at CMU and the University of Pittsburgh.
If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 