Wild Hawthorn Press / Ian Hamilton Finlay
Details
Type of record: Archive
Title: Wild Hawthorn Press / Ian Hamilton Finlay
Classmark: BC MS 20c Herbert Read/4/1/74
Creator(s): Finlay, Ian Hamilton (1925-2006)
Date(s): 1966
Size and medium: 2 items
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/704678
Collection group(s): Herbert Read Collection
Description
This file contains 2 signed typescript letters to Herbert Read from his Ian Hamilton Finlay in relation to his Wild Hawthorn Press.
Finlay writes to Read, after reading a passage from Hugh MacDiarmid's autobiography The Company I've Kept, in which Read is quoted. Finlay believes that the quotation has been used by MacDiarmid as 'a sneer at me and what I try to stand for.' Finlay, whose Wild Hawthorn Press had published a small collection of poems by Eric Satie ends his letter with a question to Read: 'This is not a personal matter but a question of what sort of art one wants to survive. Do you want to be used to defend Odes to Stalin, or the lyrics of Satie?'
A carbon copy of Read's response is typed on the verso and is characteristically generous. Having expressed himself on the side of Satie, Read ends, 'The main thing is to get on with one's own work, and in that, as always, I give you my warmest support and sympathy.
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