CHINA - SNOW, Edgar.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Unpublished typed letter signed from Lawrence Salisbury to Ida Pruitt, concerning the divorce of the famous journalists Edgar Snow and Helen Foster Snow (Nym Wales). A window onto the collapse of the marriage of Edgar and Helen Snow, the 20th century's most important bridges between China and the Western world. As shown in this terse exchange between two of their friends, the split sowed distrust and trapped some of the leading lights of American sinology in a quagmire of pettiness.Enjoying privileged access to top Chinese political and social figures, Edgar (1905-1972) and Helen Foster Snow (1907-1997, also known as Nym Wales and "Peg") shaped Western views of China and its people to an extent unmatched by any other journalist or academic. Edgar Snow's career was bookended by Red Star Over China (1927), the work that introduced Mao Zedong to the English-speaking world, and the historic 1972 Nixon visit to Beijing, for which he laid important groundwork in the 1960s. Helen Snow, reporting and writing from China in the 1930s and 1940s, opened American eyes to the country's deteriorating political and refugee situations, earning two nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. With Rewi Alley, the Snows co-founded the Indusco ("Gung Ho") co-operative movement to promote economic recovery, and they are lionized in China today.Their 1932 marriage ended acrimoniously in the late 1940s, following their permanent return to the US, and divided their sinological circle. This letter, written

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