Autograph Letter Signed "Stephen Spender" to Valentine Swain, FRCS, explaining his jokey depiction of Downing College, Cambridge. With original envelope.

Author: 
Stephen Spender, poet
Publication details: 
15 Loudoun Road, NW 8 [London], 22 April 1989
£56.00
SKU: 11186

Two pages, 12mo, good condition. He explainsthat his jokey depiction of Downing College in his novel is influenced by Dr F.R. Leavis having "intervened to make the secretary & the Literary Society withdraw an invitation for me to address that Society - so it was a private joke with myself to make the rather objectionable Dr Stockmannjjj go to Downing College where Dr Leavis was a kind of dictator. A poor joke in bad taste." He explains who Dr Stockmann was based on. In a postscript he speculates that Swain had met one of his brothers in 1942.