MANUSCRIPT: St. Joan of Arc (manuscript).
Manuscript Files
Sackville-West, Vita. Saint Joan of Arc. 1936.
5 vols., foolscap; ca. 150 leaves; green and brown ink and pencil manuscript primarily on rectos; royal blue cloth wrappers, some labeled.
Together with:
Foolscap; 52 leaves; green ink manuscript on rectos; rust stains and residue to top left edge of many leaves, and along left edge of initial leaves.
Together with:
Foolscap; 19 leaves, typescript on rectos; and 32 leaves, typescript on rectos; with pencil and ink annotations; one leaf numbered “52,” the final page number of the merged sets of notes.
Together with:
2 Typed letters signed “Kenneth,” to Vita, both dated March 13, 1936; on five pages of R. Cobden-Sanderson Ltd letterhead.
A substantial file of material relating to the original Cobden-Sanderson edition which appeared in June 1936, as well as the abridged children’s version published by the Hogarth Press in June the following year in their World-Makers & World-Shakers series. (See Cross A31.)
Included are approximately 150 pages of manuscript notes throughout five notebooks; over fifty pages of typescript notes on Joan’s trial; and a working manuscript of over fifty pages for the children’s version, composed in green ink, with occasional typescript material affixed to manuscript leaves, and penciled word counts. Also present are six annotated illustrative photos and postcards, in addition to two letters from her publisher addressing her concerns, detailing style plans, forwarding four sets of Camelot Press specimen printed double-pages for the first edition (sixteen pages total, all present, one marked by Vita “wash-out”), and expressing admiration for her work. These letters contain several notes by Vita in the margins.
With related material, including three pages of autograph notes and queries by Vita in an envelope addressed by her to Miss Flora Grierson in Warlingham, Surrey; and four small pages of notes on Joan of Arc in an unidentified, but childlike hand.
The success and fame of the 1930s gave Vita pause to take stock of her spiritual success. To Harold who was in America in 1934, Vita uncharacteristically wrote, “I pray for you every night and morning, and at intervals throughout the day” (Glendinning, p. 277). Nigel, seventeen years old, told her he was undecided about religion. “I said I was too,” she recorded, and her curiosity deepened. “I wish I could understand what it all really meant to people who believe” she commented to Harold (ibid). It is this line of questioning that led her to explore Joan of Arc as a subject of study.
On the eve of its publication, Harold wrote, “I have been thinking a great deal about your Joan book … Of course, you will be bothered by endless Joan cranks who will realize that the book is likely to become a standard work and will attack it on these grounds. But you will not mind that. The thing is a very brilliant piece of reconstruction upon factual rather than upon imaginative lines” ( Harold Nicolson Diary and Letters 1930-1939, April 28, 1936).
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