Correspondence.
Margaret Atwood – Xandra Bingley Archive
1984 – 2006
Over two decades of correspondence between Margaret Atwood and Xandra Bingley, …
The archive breaks down as follows:
• 21 TLS, 28 pages total
• 27 ALS, 41 pages total
• 1 typed and handwritten letter, 2 pages
• 7 cards, 17 sides covered
• 1 email, 1 page
• 1 email Bingley to Atwood, 1 page
• 1 invitation, 1 program; 2 photocopy newspaper articles; 8 pages total
1984 – 6
1985 – 3
1990 – 2
1991 – 1
1992 – 5
1993 – 5
1994 – 4
1995 – 4
1996 – 6
1997 – 6
1998 – 1
1999 – 6
2000 – 2
2001 – 3
2002 – 1
2003 – 1 (brief)
2006 – 1 (email, one each from XB and MA)
1. Identity. Xandra is this person: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/aug/06/featuresreviews.guardianreview6
2. Size and date span
56 items 1984-2006, plus extras; waiting to hear if she can get her letters from MA to have both sides.
40 of them are from the 1990s.
3. Content
The follow gloss is based on a skim of the typed letters - the autograph letters are difficult to read quickly. But they are mostly signed with love, xxs, oos, etc., and have greetings like “Hello old buddy,” “pal,” etc.
1. LOTS of these letters are about domestic matters, especially the latest ones, 2000 on: MA as daughter, as wife, as mother and as step-mother; news of her husband, her parents, and other family members. People always seem to write about health issues, and she does too (though mostly those of other people). She also writes, on occasion, about politics.
2. She does write bits here and there of literary news, and of progress on her own work, from the first letter onward, when she is sending XB chapters to read.
Her March 1985 letter from Alabama is good, presenting as it does her observations about the US; the next letter, May 1985, opens with a long paragraph about feminism and politics. Some times she is quite humorous: “I am at the page proof stage of my novel (the ‘it’s almost too late’ stage.) I had a nightmare about having put Nancy Reagan into it by mistake, & then realized she was going to sue the pants off me. Woke up wondering why I had been so stupid.” June 19 1993). The one from December 30 1993 describing what it’s like to be on book tour is pretty funny (more on book tours, esp in 1997 and 1999). In April 1994 she draws two sketches to illustrate ergonomically incorrect and correct working positions for her friend. In June 1994 she writes her that cancer/alzheimer’s joke. November 1994, on the writing life: “We have been struggling with the demon Writing – both of us – though luckily we chose to have the epilectic-fit, it’s-no-good, throw-it-out-the-window experience on different days. It I an odd way to spend one’s life – making up fine lies and fobbing them off on people. Oh well. Too late now to be a brain surgeon – mostly we enjoy it….” Dust-jacket issues (and lots of politics), Sept 1995. Literary allusions throughout of course, no need to mention any in particular. Paragraph on the unauthorized biographer of MA (August 1996).
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