Lot 24: JENNINGS (ELIZABETH)

Poetical and other papers of Elizabeth Jennings, comprising autograph drafts of over forty poems, including 'The Nature of Prayer (a debt to Van Gogh's Crooked Church)', 'Whitsun Sacrament' (the title altered from "Confirmation"), 'Solzhenitsyn, February 1974' (signed [written on his expulsion from the Soviet Union]), 'Keats in the Lake District' (signed), 'Christ on the Cross' (signed), 'After a Time (for a friend dead two years)' (signed), 'Communion' (signed), 'Out of the Heights', 'Leaving a Room', 'Death of Neruda', 'The Lord's Prayer' (signed), 'Meditation on the Nativity', 'Before Snow', 'Towards a Religious Poem', 'Out of a Nightmare', 'Snake Charmer', 'Eskimo Art', 'Turner (prose poem)', 'Toyshop', 'French Literature', 'Ballad', 'Renoir', 'Success', 'Prisoner' (signed, plus proof sheets), 'Morning Herald' (signed), 'Mondrian', 'An Attempt to Charm Sleep', 'Given Notice (for Clare)', 'Opera', 'Celebration of Light', 'Munch', 'Penultimate', 'Van Gogh', 'Box Room', 'Ends', 'Deaf', 'Not For Use', 'Cancer', 'This Is' (signed), 'Not Abstract', and 'Rembrandt's Late Self-Portraits', plus numerous typescripts (some with further revisions and signed) and carbons; together with incoming correspondence including autograph letters by Seamus Heaney (...the underground stream of generous appreciation – such as your own – is as important as the reviews..."), her fellow 'Movement' poet, Kingsley Amis (two letters, one giving his considered opinion of her Moments of Grace: "there's quite a clear distinction between the poems of reflection (forgive the 19th century jargon) and the poems of feeling...I find the second sort very hard to do, in fact impossible, so I'm inclined to admire it more. You manage without any whimsy, the poems have their own kind of logic. I think you're breaking new ground...I think you've brought it off; something of a breakthrough. And they're all enjoyable. Well done that girl"), Veronica Wedgwood (on Saint-John Perse), John Gielgud (two, about her poems, his play and his book), and the Appointments Secretary of 10 Downing Street (awarding her a supplementary civil list pension); with six studio photographs by Ramsey & Muspratt; and books, including Christopher Devlin, Hamlet's Divinity (inscribed to her by her fellow poet, Peter Levi), Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (with her ownership inscription of 1958), John Lennon, In His Own Write (with "Lennonesque" gift note by Iris Murdoch), Roger Hargreaves, Little Miss Scatterbrain (inscribed by Elizabeth Jennings to Veronica Wedgwood: "This book is my True Life Story") and Little Miss Splendid" ("And this, dearest Veronica, is Your Biography!")

A FINE ARCHIVE, INCLUDING DRAFTS OF MANY OF ELIZABETH JENNINGS'S BEST KNOWN POEMS.