Beschreibung:

Title: 7 Letters (with original art sketch) by South Carolina author of children’s classic, “Master Skylark” Author: Bennett, John ("Jack") Place: Publisher: Date: 1893-1901 Description: 7 Letters, 1893-1901, 4 written from Chillicothe, Ohio one from New York City (while attending the Art Students League) and 2 from Charleston, S.C., all to his friend, nurse Nellie Ward in Newark, New Jersey, New York City, and Salt Sulphur Springs, West Virginia: 3 Autograph Letters Signed, December 28, 1893 (with original art sketch), January 16, 1896 (New York), May 14, 1902 (Charleston) 4pp., 7pp. and 4pp.; and 4 Typed Letters Signed (with some handwritten additions), November 27, 1899, December 20 [1899?], May 19, 1900 and December 29, 1901, 2pp., 2pp., 3pp. and 4pp. With 3 original mailing envelopes. A prolific artist, writer and poet, the subject of a recent biography, Bennett is best-remembered for his classic 1896 novel, Master Skylark, about child actors of Shakespeare’s time. The first letter in this group was written 3 years earlier, when Bennett was an unknown 28 year-old Ohio journalist, free-lance writer and illustrator, who, suffered ill-health and had become addicted to Cocaine. After “Skylark” became a best-seller, Bennett, seeking a warmer climate, moved to Charleston, where he married a wealthy young woman of that city. The last of these letters was written just after his marriage and the publication of his second book. By then settled in Charleston, he was welcomed as a Yankee literary celebrity, until he imprudently made remarks to a women’s club about inter-racial sexual relationships which the matrons found “revolting”. Ostracized, Bennett was not welcomed back into the Southern fold until Charleston’s World War I “cultural renaissance”, when his talents as artist and writer were again acclaimed. Bennett’s own racial tolerance was displayed by his fascination with African-American culture – he and his wife studied Gullah, the South Carolina “Negro patois” and compiled a collection of Negro spirituals, mentioned in one of these letters. He also had an interest in Asian folk tales; in 1928, he would publish a book of “laughable” short stories, “The Pigtail of Ah Lee Ben Loo”. Curiously, in his 1893 letter, he includes a full-page sketch of an Asian man with a caption of actual Chinese characters, referring to some private joke he shared with Miss Ward. In his other letters, he talks of his work on ‘Master Skylark’ and his next novel, ‘Barnaby Lee’; of his production, with his wife, of an illustrated Charleston calendar (“the best collection of Charleston views ever published” and “the best piece of printing ever put out” in that city), and writes intimately, and at length, of his nervous temperament and personal agonies, undoubtedly linked to his drug addiction. As Bennett’s voluminous personal papers are held by the South Carolina Historical Society, which considers them among its “largest and most valuable collections”, these letters, spanning eight years of intimate friendship, may be the most significant of his early life still in private hands. Partial transcript available on request. Lot Amendments Condition: Only light wear; very good or better. Item number: 238362