Lettres Imaginaires.
Butts, Mary. Lettres Imaginaires. [Antibes: January 22, 1928.]
37 typescript leaves including title page (text pages are misnumbered 1 through 37; there is no page 29), rectos only; evenly browned; edges lightly chipped.
Together with:
Autograph letter signed, “Mary Butts,” to Edward Titus, January 22, 1928, two leaves of rue de Monttessuy letterhead (with address crossed out and her Antibes location written in), rectos only. Edgeworn, faintly dampstained, two pieces of tape on first leaf.
Original typescript translation from the French of Imaginary Letters sent by Butts to her publisher, Edward Titus, in 1926, with her letter that accompanied her revised proofs, discussing the translation of the title and her corrections to the proofs, and inquiring about Titus’s plans to garner reviews. The manuscript bears Butts’s autograph revisions to nearly every page, from making minor emendations to spelling and punctuation, to filling in missing words, to eliminating or revising phrases and sentences. The most substantial rewrite changed “Good manners forbade it, and pride and self-preservation” to “I had given up trying to seduce him” (p. 17).
Originally published in the October and November 1919 issues of The Little Review, Letters Imaginaires is the most celebrated of Butts’s works. A collection of letters never intended to be mailed, written by Butts to the mother of her lover, it is an important and largely biographical example of her work. “He is cruel, devoted, jealous, double willed, capable of every perversion of sentiment. He is a gentle man, a saint, a cad, and a child who should not be let out alone. …to his torment, certainly to ours, who greatly love what we have pieced together of the design.” The poetic, intuitive and resigned tone of the letters perfectly matched the life of their maverick writer.
Mary Butts (1890-1937) began her short but dynamic career in the orbit of expatriate pre-war London, where she socialized and sparred with H.D., Ezra Pound, and Rebecca West, among others. As her short stories began appearing in London literary magazines, she herself appeared regularly at exclusive literary salons and raucous café conversations. In 1918 she met and married the poet and publisher John Rodker; however her pursuit of sexual liberation caused the marriage to dissolve within 18 months. Butts became notorious for her explosive relationships with both men and women, as well as for her long-standing opium addiction which, combined with her acutely sensitive nature, led to a breakdown in 1930, and ultimately led to her death at the age of 46.
Described by her friends as an emotionally “tragic figure” and largely eclipsed professionally by her male contemporaries, Butts was best-known until recently for her unconventional biography of Cleopatra, a hybrid of fact and fancy, rather than for her substantial body of short fiction. The late twentieth century saw an intensive reexamination of her oeuvre, and she is now ranked among the most important female writers of her time. Writing in the London Review of Books, Patricia Beer commented on “the fashionable drive to exhume ‘forgotten women writers’”: “The category is dreary. Mary Butts is not.” In rhetoric more hyperbolic, Oliver Conant claimed Butts as “a writer who streaked brightly, like as shooting star, across the firmament of international modernism.”
Expatriate manuscripts appear infrequently on the market; manuscripts of this caliber are rare.
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