DURRELL, Lawrence.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A collection of correspondence and typescript material with Elliott Macrae and Alan Williams, his American publishers at Viking. A substantial archive documenting Lawrence Durrell's rapport with his American publishers, above all his dynamic and often affectionate correspondence with Dutton's Elliott Macrae. The letters show Durrell keenly attuned to the business of publishing - sales, promotion, critical reception - and unexpectedly modest about his growing fame. Early on he predicts, with wry confidence, that he "may be a literary property worth owning", while announcing the completion of the third book in the Alexandria Quartet (22 Jan. 1958). The triumphant reception of Mountolive later that year prompts warm praise for Dutton's jacket design and publicity: "the finest piece of commercial art I've ever seen… even Henry Miller admires it" (17 Nov. 1958). A week later, he celebrates the Book-of-the-Month Club selection as a breakthrough for the Quartet in the American market (24 Nov. 1958).Durrell's exchanges chart the Quartet's progress - Justine (1956), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), Clea (1960) - and reveal his anxieties about sustaining its quality: "all this success is making me more timid than elated… you are wise to consider holding [Clea] while Mountolive has a clear run" (8 Dec. 1958). In a spirited year-end letter he recounts the sequence of international advances that followed Dutton's interest, adding, half-jokingly, that he may yet avoid alternate careers

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