Beschreibung:

poet, editor & co-founder of Agenda, 1939-2003) A collection of material relating to the T.S. Eliot Special double-issue (Vol.23 Nos.1-2), including the previously unpublished lecture Scylla and Charybdis originally delivered by Eliot at a conference in Nice in 1952 and supplied here with a covering note by his widow Valerie Eliot on Faber & Faber headed paper, alongside numerous letters and postcards from the various authors, academics and literary luminaries written in response to Cookson's request for contributions to the issue, alongside typescripts of the articles in question, many with autograph corrections, some with cover notes signed by the contributors, galley proofs with ms. corrections (presumably by Cookson) and photographic proofs, and typescript index, some folds, staple-marks and similar, minor creases, v.s., 1984-85 (sm.qty) *** A fascinating archive relating to one of the most well-known and loved issues of the magazine Agenda, which Cookson co-founded and edited for over forty years: "Once Cookson had returned to London carrying his third-class degree (he had only studied the Old English part of the syllabus), he soon found funding from the Arts Council for Agenda. When the Arts Council withdrew its funding after twenty-seven years the magazine continued with generous support from T. S. Eliot's widow, Valerie, and J. Paul Getty, among others. Cookson's gift as an editor lay in being a patient reader. The poet Kathleen Raine said he was the finest and closest reader of poems she had known...His successor as editor of Agenda, Patricia McCarthy, said of Cookson's approach to poetry that he loved ‘transcendence over the mundane and popular polemic’" (W.S. Milne, DNB). Correspondees featured in this collection include Valerie Eliot, C.H. Sisson, Kathleen Raine, the Earl of Gowrie, publisher Peter du Sautoy, Frank Kermode, Roy Fuller and Roger Sharrock.