Correspondence with Patricia MacManus (one file)
Iris Murdoch to Pat MacManus:
Correspondence, 1963-1993
Nearly twenty letters from Iris Murdoch to Houghton Mifflin publicity director Patricia MacManus over the course of thirty years. Murdoch and MacManus became acquainted professionally during MacManus’s tenure at Viking (Murdoch’s American publisher), following her departure to the publicity department at Houghton Mifflin, the two women remained friends. In addition to reflections on writing and teaching, Murdoch’s letters discuss traveling – the U.S., Russia, Italy, Canada, Ireland – and plans to meet MacManus in New York and Oxford; thank MacManus for gifts received and parties given (MacManus fêted Murdoch in New York on more than one occasion); and send well wishes for health of family members. Together with three letters from Murdoch to Mariquita MacManus Mullan, MacManus’s sister, and one letter from John Bayley to MacManus.
Patricia MacManus was the daughter of Irish nationalist and folklorist Seumas MacManus and writer and translator Catalina Páez. Raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Piermont, New York, Patricia’s childhood house was visited regularly by Irish literary figures and Latin American intellectuals and politicians. Seumas and his first wife, Irish poet Ethna Carbery, were close intimates of William Butler Yeats and his lover, the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. Catalina was the granddaughter of Jose Antonio Páez, the first president of Venezuela.
MacManus went to work for Viking Press in 1940, becoming the publishing house’s publicity director in the early 1950s, and from the late 1950s until 1965, she served as publicity director for Houghton Mifflin. It was in these capacities that she came to work with, and befriend, a variety of novelists, among them Jack Kerouac, Louis Auchincloss, Saul Bellow, and Iris Murdoch. MacManus contributed throughout her career to Saturday Review, The New York Herald Tribune, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Commonweal.
Inventory
Murdoch to MacManus
17 autograph letters signed, “Iris” or “I,” to “Pat,” 1963-1993; most on Royal Mail blue enveloped stationery with a handful on leaves of 5 ½ x 7-inch plain paper; most 1-2 pp.
Murdoch to Mariquita MacManus Mullan
Three autograph letters signed, “Iris,” to “Mariquita,” ca. mid 1980s; all letters on blue laid paper with original envelopes; two letters regarding plans to meet in Oxford and one regarding Murdoch’s trip to New York.
Bayley to MacManus
One autograph letter signed, “John,” to “Pat,” ca. September 1998; Royal Mail blue enveloped stationery; one page. Thanking MacManus for her letter and updating her on Murdoch’s new publications and her declining health (Murdoch died just five months later, in February 1999). In part, “Things are rough and getting rougher, but we struggle on, and are happy at the moment to do it on our own.”
Highlights from Murdoch’s letters to MacManus
Ca. December 1962. Writing that she wishes they could spend Christmas together – playfully chastising MacManus for not visiting – and sending happy wishes for the New Year. In part, “Your inability to get farther than the land of our fathers is a disgrace… I have such vivid and happy memories of talking to you in that New York bar. I never feel very comfortable in an American bar, however. We must meet in an English pub one day…”
Ca. August 1963. Thanking MacManus for sending a book by Seumas MacManus, her father. She inquires what her friend has been up to lately and mentions a recent trip. In part, “We have just come back from Canada, where we had a very good time, giving some lectures and going about. Such very nice people. (Dry though!)” She adds that she has resigned from St. Anne’s and won’t be teaching at Oxford the following year – “but I’ll be doing some lecturing in London instead. I do want to go on teaching and not be just a ‘writer.’”
Ca. November 1963. Repeating her thanks for receiving MacManus’s f
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