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Archive of 187 Items 500pp Kenyon Review Associate Editor Rice Tells Story of Preeminent Journal's Early History
Archive of 187 Items 500pp Kenyon Review Associate Editor Rice Tells Story of Preeminent Journal's Early History
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Archive of 187 Items 500pp Kenyon Review Associate Editor Rice Tells Story of Preeminent Journal's Early History

Described as "perhaps the best known and most influential literary magazine in the English-speaking world" in the 1940s and 1950s, the Kenyon Review published the poetry, short stories, and essays of some of the most influential and accomplished writers of the mid-twentieth century. From its founding in 1939 until he died in 1956, philosopher Philip B. Rice served as the Review's associate editor. This archive of his correspondence offers a fascinating glimpse into the production of the Review in its early years of power and prestige in the literary world. It includes extensive correspondence with the Review's founding editor John Crowe Ransom, especially when Ransom was away from Kenyon College for extended periods. It also includes letters from a wide array of poets and writers who were graduates of Kenyon, published in the Kenyon Review, or were friends of Rice.

PHILIP BLAIR RICE, Archive of correspondence, ca. 1928-1966, most 1941-1955. Approximately 187 documents, most correspondence; approximately 500 pp., various sizes, many 8.5ʺ x 11ʺ. All documents are in protective sleeves; most (~70 percent) are typed; several have related envelopes; most are in very good condition; the issue of Kenyon Collegian from 1949 has tears on folds.

The archive primarily focuses on the challenges of editing the Kenyon Review, a literary magazine founded at Kenyon College in 1939. John Crowe Ransom served as its first editor until his retirement in 1959, and a considerable portion of the correspondence is between Rice and Ransom over details of editing the journal, especially when Ransom was away in 1944 and Rice was acting editor. Their correspondence includes a seven-page "report on the first six issues of the Review, concerning its problems of finance and circulation as I see them," written by Rice in April 1940 and submitted to Ransom; letters to, from, and about Kenyon College President Gordon K. Chalmers (1904-1956); and the controversy over visiting professor Robert S. Hillyer's criticisms of Ezra Pound in 1949.

Other correspondence includes a fascinating letter by Rice to Ransom regarding the New York City trial of poet Robert "Cal" Lowell (1917-1977), a conscientious objector when World War II became an American offensive war, for whom Rice served as a character witness; several letters regarding Robert S. Hillyer's criticism of Ezra Pound's receiving the Bollingen Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress; and other aspects of the development of poetry and the Kenyon Review.

\Correspondents (all with signatures) include American writer Eleanor Clark (1913-1996); American poet Allen Tate (1899-1979); American writer Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980); American poet Randall Jarrell (1914-1965), British-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973); American poet Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966); American novelist Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964); English novelist Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939); German novelist Thomas Mann (1875-1955); American poet Jim Wright (1927-1980); American poet Robert Lowell; English artist Dorothy Shakespear Pound (1886-1973), wife of Ezra Pound; American novelist Norman Mailer (1923-2007); Professor of English Roberta Swartz Chalmers (1903-1993), wife of Kenyon president Gordon K. Chalmers; Colombian-American philosopher Eliseo Vivas (1901-1991); American literary critic Lionel Trilling (1905-1975); British crime writer and poet Julian Symons (1912-1994); Austrian-American psychologist Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990); and American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) (photocopy only).

Highlights and Excerpts
- Philip B. Rice to John C. Ransom, October 14, 1943, New York, New York:
"Yesterday morning I went down to the Federal Court House near Brooklyn Bridge for Cal's sentencing. It wasn't exactly a trial, since he had pleaded guilty.... neither the prosecutor nor the judge had any doubt about Cal's integrity and sincerity."
"The prosecutor gave a very fair statement of the case, and read some excerpts from Cal's statement. He made it clear that Cal had twice volunteered for commissions, in the army and the navy, and that he had kept his draft board fully informed of his whereabouts and his sentiments; also that Cal could now join the Medical Corps if permitted. But the law, he said, was clear on the subject, and he asked for a penalty of three years' imprisonment. The judge argued very patiently, if ineffectively with Cal, almost begging him to change his mind, and saying that it was not too late. The judge's harangue, however, was quite beside Cal's points, and seemed to be his stock lecture to pacifists: we were attacked, and would you defend your mother, etc. etc. Cal's point, of course, was (however mistakenly) that he had been for the war when it was a defensive war, and had been willing to serve, but he thought we had now passed to the offensive, and the war—particularly including the bombing of civilians—could now be brought to an end.... Then the legal question arose whether Cal was a conscientious objector. The judge first decided he wasn't, because he had not so entered himself when he registered for the draft, and on this basis sentenced Cal to two years in prison. Then Cal's lawyer...pointed out that Cal had not been a conscientious objector at the time when he registered but had now become one. The judge was impressed by this point and reduced Cal's sentence to a year and a day."

- John C. Ransom to Philip B. Rice, October 20, 1943, Gambier, Ohio:
"Cal is not a normal or average specimen, but whether or not to go on and make him out as mad seems to me another matter.... We are probably all mad if we had to go by the standards of animal mental health; we have a free play of deliberation and choice built in, so to speak, and any one of us takes great chances. If we have to define mad and stick to it, in this context, perhaps we are mad when we take a chance without misgivings. And that would imperil Cal's status, because he is tough and fearless. The prison term does not mean to him what it would to you and me.... I think of Cal as deeply poetic, and really fine in his tastes and aspirations, but too ragged a performer; I think he has grown since he left here but I wouldn't bank on a brilliant future."

- Philip B. Rice to William Carlos Williams, September 20, 1949, Gambier, Ohio:
"Eric Bentley has just written us that there is a new translation of Sophocles' Electra by Ezra Pound, and that you might be able to tell us how we could get hold of part of it for publication in the Kenyon Review. We would like to show that the opinion of Pound's poetry expressed by our new colleague, Mr. Hillyer, does not represent the attitude of Kenyon as a whole toward Pound, and particularly not the attitude of the Kenyon Review."

- Dorothy Pound to Philip B. Rice, September 24, 1949, Washington, D.C.
"It would seem that Hillyer is not the only american writer ignorant of the fact that the american reporters in Europe were told to 'hold down', that is, to refrain from sending european news, at least as early as 1927, and that in consequence a very great ignorance of European facts pervaded the U.S.A. And that even with a flood of memoirs from some not very savory ex-officials, that ignorance is being diluted very slowly."
"E. [Ezra Pound] noted with pleasure the presence of R. P. Warren on your board."

- Philip B. Rice to John C. Ransom, September 30, 1949, Gambier, Ohio:
"The not too aromatic duty of sending you the enclosed Collegian has fallen to my lot.... Denny, Charles and I had a conference and decided that something must be done about it. Our first thought was that each of us should write, on behalf of the English Dept., KSE and KR respectively, a restrained statement correcting the factual misinformation in the story. Then we decided that it would be much stronger if we could get the President himself to step in.... At first Gordon could not see that the article was anything more than an undergraduate exuberance, and talked vaguely about free speech, and came to the total defense of Hillyer."
"Gordon called Denny in this morning to read the statement which is to appear under his (Gordon's) signature in this week's Collegian. The statement repudiates strongly the statements made about you by the Collegian writer and pays a very handsome tribute to you. It gives you the credit, among other things, for bringing to the College the greater part of the distinction it has acquired in the last ten years. It then goes on for the first time to mention Hillyer, and expresses regret that in his SRL articles he chose to bring in matters extraneous to the Pound award.... Denny left a note suggesting that Gordon (who is out of town today) should add a comment on what for us is the main point at issue—namely, H's bad manners in controversy and the bad example set to students. Whether he will or not I don't know."

- Allen Tate to John C. Ransom, April 16, 1950, Princeton, New Jersey:
"I am not at all certain that the Bollingen Foundation would hold it against the School of English that Hillyer is at Kenyon, or that Chalmers has supported Hillyer. I should be glad to find out very privately, and my enquiry would have no official significance."

- Norman Mailer to Editors of Kenyon Review, January 12, 1966, Brooklyn, New York:
"Hey little crit, cite words used where 'Norman Mailer implies.' But won't find them. Condemnation without quotation equals not New Left but Ron Berman. Sorrows for Kenyon. Lowering lit stands, kids."

Philip Blair Rice (1904-1956) was born in Indiana and studied at the University of Illinois and Indiana University, from which he graduated in 1925. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford University, and received JM, a second bachelor's, and PPF degrees by 1928. He toured Europe and returned to the United States in 1919. In 1932, he married artist Kathryn Clark (1910-1991), and they had two children. He taught at the University of Cincinnati (1930-1937) and Kenyon College (1938-1956). He helped to establish the Kenyon Review and served as its associate editor. He served as president of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Society (1953-1954) and in 1953 became Chair of the Kenyon Committee to Advance Original Work in Philosophy that awarded Rockefeller Foundation fellowships to philosophers. In 1955, he published On the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a textbook that examined the central themes of twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rice died of injuries received in an automobile accident.

The Kenyon Review (1939-present) is a literary magazine based at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Critic and professor of English John Crowe Ransom founded the journal in 1939 with encouragement from Kenyon president Gordon K. Chalmers. Ransom edited the Review until his retirement in 1959. During the 1940s and 1950s, it was "perhaps the best known and most influential literary magazine in the English-speaking world" and brought great prestige to the small college. Short stories published in the Review have won 42 O. Henry Awards, more than any other nonprofit journal. Ransom's student, novelist Robie Macaulay (1919-1995), succeeded Ransom as editor, but the college closed the journal in 1969. It resumed a decade later, and from 1990 to 1994, poet Marilyn Hacker served as the Review's first full-time editor. Kenyon English professor and storyteller David H. Lynn served as editor from 1994 to 2020.

John Crow Ransom (1888-1974) was born in Tennessee and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1909. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford University, from 1910 to 1913. He taught at Vanderbilt University from 1914 until entering World War I as an artillery officer. After the war, he returned to Vanderbilt, where he was a founding member of the Fugitives, a southern literary group of sixteen writers. He published his first volume of poetry, Poems about God, in 1919, and followed it with Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). With eleven other Southern Agrarians, he published I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930), a manifesto against modern industrialism. He accepted a position at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1937. He was the founding editor of The Kenyon Review in 1939 and continued as its editor until his retirement in 1959.

Robert Silliman Hillyer (1895-1961) was born in New Jersey and graduated from Harvard University in 1917. While there, he was editor of The Harvard Advocate literary magazine. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver and in the ordnance department. He became a professor of English at Harvard in 1919, taught at Trinity College in Connecticut in the late 1920s, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1934 for his book The Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer. He was a professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard from 1937 to 1944. He was a visiting professor at Kenyon College from 1948 to 1951 and then taught at the University of Delaware from 1952 until his death. As president of the Conservative Poetry Society of America, he attacked modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was born in Idaho Territory and after attending the University of Pennsylvania graduated from Hamilton College in 1905. He received a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1906. After leaving his doctoral studies, he taught briefly at Wabash College in Indiana before being dismissed. He left for Europe, where he self-published two collections of poems before a British publisher began to publish his poetry and literary criticism. He briefly returned to the United States in 1910-1911, then spent the next thirty years in Europe. He wrote a weekly column for the socialist journal New Age from 1911 to 1921, spent time with William Butler Yeats, for whom he arranged the serialization of Dubliners, and helped found the Imagism movement in Anglo-American poetry. He also served as a foreign correspondent for Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, published in Chicago. In April 1914, he married the painter Dorothy Shakespear. Appalled by the carnage of World War I, Pound moved to Italy in 1924 and embraced fascism. During World War II, he made radio broadcasts for the Italian government, attacking the United States, Great Britain, and Jews, among others. In 1945, he was arrested by Americans in Italy on charges of treason. After being deemed unfit to stand trial, he spent more than twelve years incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. While in custody in Italy, he conducted additional work on his Cantos, which were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948). The Library of Congress controversially awarded him the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 for this publication. He was released from the psychiatric hospital in 1958 and lived in Italy until his death.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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