LETTERS: Two autograph letters signed to D.D. Paige.
Mary Lavin
Two letters to D.D. Paige
Autograph letter signed, “Mary Lavin” to Paige, June 27, 1968.
8vo.; single leaf of Abbey Farm stationery, both sides; creased.
Together with
Autograph letter signed, “Mary Lavin” to Paige, December 28, 1968.
4to.; two leaves of Abbey Farm stationery, three pages covered; creased.
Two warm and affectionate letters from noted Irish short story writer and novelist Mary Lavin to editor D.D. Paige, following his decision to leave Macmillan, Lavin’s publisher at the time. Among other topics, Lavin discusses a tragic accident that befell her daughter’s fiancé; her impending second marriage to Michael Donald Scott in 1969; the upcoming publication of In the Middle of the Fields (New York: Macmillan, 1969); and a recent story in the New Yorker, where here work appeared regularly.
The author of 19 short story collections and three novels, Lavin was a notable feminist voice amidst the male-dominated terrain of Irish writing. Her many literary honors include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for her first collection of short stories, Tales from Bective Bridge (Boston: Little Brown, 1942); two Guggenheim Fellowships (1959, 1961); the Katherine Mansfield Prize (1961); and the presidency of the Irish Academy of Letters (1971-73). Upon Lavin’s death, Eileen Battersby, the chief book critic at the Irish Times, called her “one of modern Irish fiction’s most subversive voices,” and said, “Her art explored often brutal tensions, disappointments and frustrations dictating the relationships within so-called ‘normal’ families.”
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