LETTERS: Agent correspondence, 1959-1978.
Fisher to her literary agents
1959-1978
(submission cards 1946-78)
An archive of over 300 letters and some typescript material from MFK Fisher to her literary agents Henry Volkening and Timothy Seldes, at Russell & Volkening, along with dozens of submission cards tracing their work on her behalf:
252 letters to Volkening (217 TLS, 21 ALS, 7 TPS and 7 APS); 1959-1972
53 letters to Seldes (41 TLS, 8 ALS, 2 APS and 2 TPS); 1972-1978.
Various letters to other Russell & Volkening agents, Connie Cunningham (10) and Diarmuid Russell (2).
Several dozen submission cards.
Contents
Description 3
To Volkening 3
Her books 3
Magazine writing 4
Friendship 5
Life and work 6
To Seldes 7
Typescripts 8
Submission cards 8
Printed matter 9
Related correspondence and documents 9
Description
These letters represent nearly twenty years of Fisher’s career, a period in which she published seven books and several articles. The books include: A Cordial Water (1961); Map of Another Town: A Memoir of Provence (1964); With Bold Knife and Fork (1969); Among Friends (1971); and A Considerable Town (1978). She also translated Brillat-Savarin’s Physiology of Taste (1971) and Maurice Chevalier’s My Paris (1972), for which she also wrote the foreword. To varying degrees, Fisher discusses her work on all of these books in her letters.
Fisher’s letters illustrate her respective relationships with Volkening and Seldes. She is clearly devoted to Volkening, whom she often addressed as her nephew, and signed her letters as his “devoted aunt”; they had an affectionate and nurturing relationship. She discusses all aspects of her writing with Volkening, makes queries about permissions and royalties, asks his advice regarding pieces she is working on or might potentially pursue, and gripes about editors (William Shawn and William Targ). She also sends updates about her health, family life, and travel plans, and queries Volkening for the same information on his end. Around the time Volkening announced his retirement, in 1972, Fisher began a tentative correspondence with Seldes, his successor. Fisher is wary in these early letters, and although she eventually warms to Seldes, she was never as close with him as she was to Volkening. These letters are mostly business-related.
Fisher wrote her letters on plain typing paper or green paper. The majority of them are long – at least one full page in length, and some fill two or three full pages – and often cover a wide range of topics in a single letter. Also, Fisher often sent Volkening copies or carbons of her letters to other people, to keep him au courant of other communications regarding her work.
To Volkening
Her books
In the 1950 and the early 1960s, Fisher was working on a project she often referred to as her “drinkin-likka book.” She sent Volkening an update on her progress early on in the process, “I now have a lot written, and much more in order ready to write, on Drinking (in general), Remedies (based on alcohols), Drinking for Children, Prohibition, and of course all the main types of drinkin-likka.” She goes on to say that she also has “a lot of recipes and so on…nogs, punches, remedies” (ellipsis Fisher’s, June 9, 1959).
Around the same time, she was also working on a book of natural remedies. She explains,
My ‘idea’ was/is to make a small book of remedies, very strange quaint ones which I have collected here and there for many years. The ones for hangovers and restorative punches and so on would be a part of them. It would be for a limited audience…herbs, gastronomy, Wine-and-Food boys…What do you think of it? It would be small. Curious. Not at all definitive. (May 21, 1959)
This was so similar to the liquor book that Volkening confused the two. She explains that though the remedy book does contain hangover cures, “it is NOT the likka-book!” (June 3, 1959). The remedy book was evidently set aside for some time, for in late 1960,
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