Malcolm Cowley Archive. Book, 3 Letters, 2 Post Cards, Photo Signed

Book: The View from 80. By Malcolm Cowley. The Viking Press. New York. (1980). (First Printing). xv,74 pages. 8-1/4 inches. Dust jacket. Edge tears to the dust jacket, lightly used. - - - Inscribed on the front end page: “For Betty S. Cox Ph. D. / In memory of a pleasant correspondence and now to welcome her – a little prematurely – to our select society. / Malcolm Cowley / December 1984.”

Photograph: Young Malcolm Cowley. 3-1/4 x 2-5/8 inches. Inscribed on the reverse side, in ink: “For Betty Cox / An old photograph, abou ’52, but the only small one I have. / Malcolm Cowley.”

Typed Letter Signed (TLS): Malcolm Cowley. Sherman, Conn. December 18, 1962. To: Betty (S. Cox). Signed: “Malcolm.” 1 page. 11 x 8-1/2 inches. In Part: Sympathy to Betty Cox on the loss of a child; encouragement on her dissertation on MC and other options;  his recent writings, i.e. Black Cargoes and essays for the Saturday Review & Sewanee (Review).

Typed Letter Signed (TLS): Malcolm Cowley. Sherman, Conn. November 15, 1969. To: Betty Cox. Signed: “Malcolm Cowley.” 1 page. 9-3/4 x 7-3/4 inches. In Part: …I have spoken several times at Duke, Chapel Hill North Carolina State, and once at Wake Forrest … North Carolina, a pleasant state. Mentions books: Think Back On Us & A Many Windowed House. Hawthorne to Ezra Pound. “The Long Voyage: A Study of the Poetry of Malcolm Cowley.”  Another bibliography (of Malcolm Cowley) 173 manuscript pages.

Post Card Signed. Malcolm Cowley. Oct. 30, 1960. To: Mrs. Cox. Signed: “Malcolm Cowley.” In Part: “…months without items to add to your bibliography – I’ve been teaching, reading, & that’s all..”

Post Card Signed. Malcolm Cowley. July 22, 1968. To: Betty (Cox). Signed: “Malcolm Cowley.” In Part: “…My poems are coming out in November -  Blue Juniata: Collected Poems (Viking) …”

Typed Letter Signed (TLS): Malcolm Cowley. Sherman, Conn. November 24, 1984. To: Mr. Charles W. Cox. Signed: “Malcolm Cowley.” 1 page. 9-3/4 x 7-3/4 inches. Signature smudged. In Part: “The inscribed books go off by priority mail… My best regards to Betty. I had pleasant correspondence with her when she was doing her master’s thesis…”

Copy of a note typed by Betty S. Cox (1 page) (4/18/2001) with seven crudely copied pages (Xerox copy, stapled) of from “The Portable Malcolm Cowley” mentioning Cowley and his Communist-sympathetic views. In Part: “…Malcolm Cowley’s letter-reply to my question put to him about how he regarded those years when he was regarded as a Communist-sympathetic. / That letter-reply is shown here within the Portable Cowley pages sent me by a lady in the West… But we became friends…” re: Mrs Ruth Nuzum of Boulder Colorado.

Typed Letter Signed (TLS): Mrs. Wayne B. Nuzum. May 8. Signed: “Ruth: To: Mrs. (Betty) Cox. 1 page. 10-1/2 x 7-5/8 inches. Concerning M.C. (Malcolm Cowley).

Typed Letter Signed (TLS): Mrs. Wayne B. Nuzum. July 16, 1984. Signed: “Ruth: To: Betty (Cox). 1 page. 10-1/2 x 7-5/8 inches. With envelope. In Part: “Diane Eisenberg’s MC (Malcolm Cowley) checklist (1973) update & her visit with Malcolm… (Cowley) is such a dear and gentleman, I love him…”

Copy of Yankee Magazine article on Malcolm Cowley. March 1983. 7 pages (Xerox copy, stapled) that include the cover and 8 pages that contain the complete article. With manuscript note signed “BSC” (Betty S. Cox) in red ink, with notation and extensive underlining throughout.

Copy of Blair & Ketchum’s Country Journal article on Malcolm Cowley. October 1983. 10 pages (Xerox copy, stapled). With manuscript note signed “BSC” (Betty S. Cox) in red ink, with notation and extensive underlining.

Partial copy of “Invention from Knowledge: The Hemingway-Cowley Correspondence.” From James Nagel’s Ernest Hemingway: Writer in Context. Some 37 pages printed on 19 (Xerox copy, stapled). Unsigned note and underlining by Betty Cox.

Historical Note:

- - - Malcolm Cowley, a literary critic, historian, editor, poet and essayist who was best known for being the most trenchant chronicler of the so-called Lost Generation of post-World War I writers. … Mr. Cowley notably championed the work and advanced the careers of the post-World War I writers who sundered tradition and fostered a new era in American literature. He seldom included himself as a leading player in that famed company of authors who used Paris at one time or another as a base of operations and whose creativity came to fruition in the 1920's. But he was at the hub of activity and could at least be counted as an important figure even among such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, Thornton Wilder and Edmund Wilson. … He possessed a strong sense of ironic detachment in assessing literature, which made him a valued editor at The New Republic and, from the mid-1940's, at Viking Press, the publishing house at which he worked part time until the spring of 1985, when he was 86. It was Mr. Cowley who rescued William Faulkner from possible early oblivion and who discovered John Cheever and goaded him to write. Later he championed such uncommon writers as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Ken Kesey. …– New York Times, Obituary, March 29, 1989. “Malcolm Cowley, Writer, Is Dead at 90.”