DL/A-Z//HARPER C/5 - [Correspondence with Harper Collins undated]

DL/A-Z//HARPER C/5

Sub-file

[Correspondence with Harper Collins undated]

3 Letters (typescript)
2 Postcards
3 Greetings cards
1 Notes (MS)
2 Manuscripts

Bigsby, Chris
Ellmann, Lucy
Foster, Margaret
Mantel, Hilary
Winterson, Jeanette

Harper Collins

133 is a scrap of hotel paper with a post-it note attached, containing unsigned notes [likely by Terry Karten of Harper Collins] listing US sales figures for Doris Lessing's The Real Thing, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside and African Laughter.

134 is a letter from Lessing to John Boothe of Harper Collins, addressing the question of who should provide a foreword for the latest edition of The Golden Notebook. Lessing is saddened to note her own [male, unnamed] suggestion has been rejected. She rejects the suggestion that Hilary Mantel should write it, based on Mantel's negative review of her own work. She rejects Jeanette Winterson for being, among other things, "so silly and irresponsible she shouldn't be taken seriously at all". She rejects Lucy Ellmann for not being "very interesting". She states that Margaret Foster is "safe. hardly exciting". She suggests Chris Bigsby, because he "could not be more trendy" and is a man. She also rejects the notion that Simone do Beauvoir influenced her.

135 is a postcard from Helen [Ellis] of Harper Collins to Lessing, thanking her for lunch and providing details of a forthcoming interview with BBC Radio Scotland.

136 is a letter from Lessing to Phillippa Harrison of Harper Collins, providing an edit or insert for a preface [book unknown]. The inserted copy discusses the paradoxical relationship between publishers and authors, wherein the authors are required to promote their work through interviews and television appearances, but in doing so earn the contempt of the publishers for whom they do the work. Lessing identifies that female authors are treated worse than male ones. An attached page includes an edited version of the same text.

137 is a letter from Lessing to Karten. In reference to previous correspondence, she states that she needs a new author photograph. She goes on to describe the cold in her London home in great melancholy detail.

138 is a greetings card from Ashley Chase of Harper & Row [dating the card before 1990] to Lessing, thanking her for a meeting in New York.

139 is a postcard from [name unclear] of Harper Collins to Lessing. It mentions meeting Lessing at a Foyles launch, and encloses tickets for Edinburgh.

140 is a name card including the names and addresses of Moira Reilly and Edward Tobin of Harper Collins, Ireland. Tobin's details are handwritten on the back.

141 is a manuscript of the preface to the first volume of a collection of Lessing's short stories. It is written by Lessing. The stories described include Through the Tunnel, The Habit of Loving, One off the Short List, To Room Nineteen, The Eye of God in Paradise, England Versus England, Between Men, A Woman on a Roof, The Day Stalin Died, How I finally Lost My Heart, Two Potters, A Room, Wine and "He". She compares these stories to The Fifth Child and The Summer Before the Dark.

142 is a manuscript of the preface to the second volume of a collection of Lessing's short stories. It is written by Lessing. The stories described include Our Friend Judith, Each Other, Homage for Isaac Babel, Outside the Ministry, Dialogue, Notes for a Case History, Out of the Fountain, An Unposted Love Letter, A Year in Regent's Park, Lions, Leaves and Roses, The Other Garden, Report on the Threatened City, Not a Very Nice Story, The Temptation of Jack Orkney, An Old Woman and her Cat, Mrs Fortescue and Side Benefits of an Honourable Profession. She compares the stories to A Man and Two Women, England Versus England, The Habit of Loving, To Room Nineteen and the Eye of God in Paradise.

143 is a greetings card from Nicholas [unknown] of Harper Collins announcing that the finished books [presumably Cleft] have just arrived. The back of the note includes the hand-written quote "Once long ago, all the people in the world were female – then arrived the men"