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Collier's Editor Harford Powel 74 letters Corresponds with a Wide Array of Writers
Collier's Editor Harford Powel 74 letters Corresponds with a Wide Array of Writers
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Description:

Collier's Editor Harford Powel 74 letters Corresponds with a Wide Array of Writers

This fascinating archive of correspondence between a wide variety of authors and Collier's Weekly editor Harford Powel Jr. includes a large array of authors from the 1920s. A handful are addressed to other editors at Collier's. Much of the correspondence deals with article and story ideas and manuscripts. Among the correspondents included here are novelist Sophie Kerr Underwood (1880-1965), poet and Princeton professor of English Henry van Dyke (1852-1933), puppeteer and illustrator Tony Sarg (1880-1942), creator of Chinese detective "Mr. Wong" Hugh Wiley (1884-1968), novelist and playwright Kate Jordan Vermilye (1862-1926); crime novelist and short story writer Octavus Roy Cohen (1891-1959), poet and magazine editor Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949), writer, cellist, and war hero Robert Haven Schauffler (1879-1964), U. S. Army General Leonard Wood (1860-1927), English humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), drama critic Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943), novelist William Almon Wolff (1885-1933), travel author Frederick O'Brien (1869-1932), author Julian Street (1879-1947), wife of H. G. Wells and short story author Catherine Wells (ca. 1872-1927), novelist and short story writer Ben Ames Williams (1889-1953), author and U.S. ambassador to Italy who ghostwrote Benito Mussolini's autobiography Richard Washburn Child (1881-1935), dramatist Jesse Lynch Williams (1871-1929), novelist H. C. Witmer, journalist Heywood Broun (1888-1939), psychoanalyst and author Andre Tridon (1877-1922), attorney and author of legal novels Arthur Train (1875-1945), novelist William Allen White (1868-1944), and investigative journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958).

HARFORD POWEL JR., Archive of correspondence with various authors, 1917-1922. 74 letters, 100 pp. General toning; some edge tears, especially to carbon copies.

Excerpts
- Powel to Sophie Kerr Underwood, April 10, 1918, New York, NY, Typed Copy:
"There is a lot of charm and humor in this story but somehow or other, it doesn't seem to get across. I think the reason is that the reader is led on to expect more of a plot, and in the end, feels cheated.... I hope you have better luck elsewhere."

- J. P. Tumulty, Secretary to President Woodrow Wilson, to Lowell Mellett, May 18, 1920, Washington, DC, Typed Letter Signed, on White House stationery:
"I took up with the President the contents of your letter of the 12th of May. Frankly, he does not feel free at the present time to grant such an interview as you suggest. To comply with your request would cause him embarrassment in many other directions, which you can readily appreciate. I know you will understand."

- Henry van Dyke to Henry J. Forman, July 1, 1917, Princeton, NJ, Typed Letter Signed:
"Referring to our conversation at the Century Club a few weeks ago, in which you asked me for an article for Collier's Weekly, I have since that time written something, of which you will find the MS. enclosed."

- Henry van Dyke to Webb Waldron, December 27, 1917, Princeton, NJ, Typed Letter Signed:
"A few days ago you sent me a letter asking me to write for Collier's. At that time I was obliged reluctantly to decline your proposal on account of the heavy pressure of work. Meantime the enclosed story has come to me, and I submit it to you as a token of good will and the wish to write for your journal."

- Sophie Kerr Underwood to Webb Waldron, March 25, 1918, New York, NY, Typed Letter Signed:
"I sent this story, sometime ago, to Mr. Forman and he returned it to me with the suggestion that I rewrite the ending and give it some sort of a 'turn.' I have done this. In fact, I have rewritten the whole story, so I am venturing to submit it a second time.
"That Richard Washburn Child article on the President was simply fine. I have been passing it around to all my friends, particularly the Democrats."

- Hugh Wiley to Lowell Mellett, July 24, 1920, San Francisco, CA, Typed Letter Signed with Handwritten Postscript Initialed:
"Yesterday I sent Colliers a Chinese story, 'Yellow Dawn,' which has everything in it that I was able to give it with several weeks hard work. I am going up in the hills next week for a change of scene."
"The Oil Stuff is worthy of the Wilson gang. They killed off exploration and development of oil lands and now they inject the con into confiscate so J. Daniels can yacht his head off seeing Alaska first on a dread 0!"
Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921, traveled to Alaska aboard the U.S. destroyer Sinclair in July 1920 to inspect the Matanuska coal fields. While in Juneau, he learned of the discovery of oil in southern and southwestern Alaska.

- Hugh Wiley to Lowell Mellett, September 14, 1920, San Francisco, CA, Typed Letter Signed:
"We must postpone my stuff for a while because I am head over heels into the movie game and hardly have time to write enough new stuff to keep me on speaking terms with the Saturday Evening Post Treasurer.
"One of the Lost Angeles gang took a sudden fancy to my Chinese stories and we are working strenuously to adapt some of them to the films. My joint looks more like a business office than anything else and I regret to discover that day by day I am losing the fine simplicity which attends a short story writer and becoming more and more involved in the old business of business."

- Charles Hanson Towne to Powel, October 18, 1921, New York, NY, Typed Letter Signed:
"Here is that piece of fiction I mentioned over the telephone the other day. I hope you will like it. If so, will you make me an offer for it?"
Accompanied by a memorandum of Miss E. Christie to Powel, October 22, 1921, regarding Towne's "Much Adieu About Nothing."

- Powel to Charles Hanson Towne, October 27, 1921, New York, NY, Typed Copy:
"I like 'Much Adieu' very much; I am now running a long piece by Wodehouse in a not very dissimilar strain, and following that with another of the same general kind. Of course, the principal struggle is for variety. Would you mind, therefore, letting some other magazine have this and giving me a chance at another story."

- Robert Haven Schauffler to Powel, February 4, 1920, Larchmont, NY, Typed Letter Signed:
"A few weeks ago you told me to look over 'The Silent Singers', and if it seemed all right for you in my eyes, you would print it. I did, and it didn't. But my wife and I have worked over it long to get it so that he who jazzes may comprehend and be gratified. I now pronounce it fit for you. It will be an excellent adjunct to our little policy of making the man in the street feel what a hell of a fellow he is."

- Ethel Wodehouse to Powel, February 18, 1920, Great Neck, Long Island, NY, Autograph Letter Signed:
"I am writing for my husband, who is busy working away at the novel in the next room.
"Can you wait till the first of the month, as he will have finished the book by then, and he is always referring back to the early part. He has already rewritten it twice. It really looks awfully good. It is much longer than any of his others and will run to nearly 120 thousand words."
"P.S. I could easily bring it in to be typed, unless you want it badly he would rather keep it until the end of the month, as he likes polishing it, & rereading it like a dog with a bone."
P. G. Wodehouse's novel The Little Warrior appeared in Collier's Weekly in seventeen installments between April 10 and August 28, 1920.

- Powel to Frederick O'Brien, March 29, 1920, New York, NY, Typed Copy:
"This will confirm our verbal arrangement, through which you kindly agree to deliver ten short stories to Collier's. These stories, in accordance with a memorandum which I made, will be chiefly located in the Pacific Ocean and will include stories of Hawaii, the Philippines, China, etc."

- Powel to Frederick O'Brien, April 21, 1920, New York, NY, Typed Copy:
"Like them? I love them. I now have two examples of good hard sense in 'Plague and Bolshevism' and 'Japanned Hawaii', a very stimulating business piece in 'Atlantic City' and a good piece of humor in 'The Electric Hair Brush'."

- Frederick O'Brien to Powel, April 23, 1920, New York, NY, Typed Letter Signed:
"I have seen the illustrations of Leroy Baldridge for the 'Jade Bracelet of Ah Queen'. They are excellent. So much so, that if it is compatible with the orderly procedure of Collier things, I am anxious to have them to take to California, as trophies of my first story in Collier's, really to frame them. Of course, I want to pay whatever is demanded by any one who has any monetary rights in them.
"I am sincerely obliged to you for the kind words about my editorials. They have inspired me to write more, which I shall."

- Julian Street to Powel, August 26, 1921, Norfolk, CT, Typed Letter Signed:
"Did I write you that this matter of accuracy about the question of marriages between Japanese on the one hand and Koreans or Formosans on the other, had boiled down to practically a matter of hair-splitting?
"I said such marriages were 'forbidden by law.' The fact seems to be that there is no legal provision for them. This seems to me to imply some sort of restriction—otherwise, why should any legal provision be necessary?"
"My error was very slight and purely technical. The sense of what I said was correct, so I see no reason for going to the trouble of amending the statement.
"I had a letter from a dentist in Washington questioning my anthropological statements. He didn't make any very definite criticism, but just said I was all wrong. Evidently he believes the negro and white races in this country will merge. I think he was a negro. I sorter sensed it, but may be wrong. That's all I've heard."

- H. C. Witmer to Powel, April 15, 1921, New York, NY, Typed Letter Signed:
"Well, here it is!
"I hope this first installment comes up to your expectations. I enjoyed writing it immensely—yes, even the rewriting—a job I usually loathe, in fact invariably can't do!
"Following your good suggestions, I toned down the leading character's speech considerably, but as per our last phone conversation, I have let him philosophize, use slangy similes, observe what is going on around him beneath the surface, etc."
Witmer's series of stories appeared as "Fighting Blood" in Collier's Weekly in 12 installments between June 17, 1922, and February 17, 1923. It was adapted into 12 serial reels as the silent movie Fighting Blood (1923), in which June Marlowe and Clark Gable appeared as extras.

- H. C. Witmer to Powel, March 2, 1922, n.p., Typed Letter Signed:
"You are right in your estimate of the picture bunch. Frankly, I'm disgusted with the lot of them. I've had so damned many unpleasant experiences in dealing with them that when I hear 'movie rights?' now, I hang up the phone! The latest is our revered 'Leatherpushers'. The producer after defaulting on several payments to me, finally sent me a bum check which seriously embarrassed me temporarily, as I paid an important obligation with it. I understand he is now bankrupt (Messmore) and cannot fulfill his contract with Universal, after making six pictures.... The pictures, by the way, are coining money. I have that from an authoritative source."

- André Tridon to [Powel?], August 25, [1921?], Indianapolis, IN, Typed Letter Signed:
"If I can book passage on the Scandinavian line I am going to Russia as soon as I step off the platform in September. Will you use some Russian stuff and if so what? How much c[o]uld you use of it and what can you pay for it? Excuse this horrible looking letter written while the train is lurching drunkenly."

- W. A. White to Powel, March 14, 1922, Emporia, KS, typed Letter Signed:
"I have been waiting with my nose flattened against the window pain steadily now for ten days expecting the expressman to deliver those hundred extra Collier's with my article in it. I have taken neither food nor water, and they are going to resort to forcible feeding if the thing does not come soon."

Harford Powel Jr. (1887-1956) was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Harvard University in 1909, where he was president of The Lampoon student publication. He began his career with Vogue magazine in New York. During World War I, he served as a captain in the Army Air Corps. He served as editor of Harper's Bazaar (1917), Collier's Weekly (1919-1922), and The Youth's Companion (1922-1928). In 1932, he became vice president of an advertising firm and led advertising campaigns for Macy's Gimbels, and other New York stores. He served as vice president of the Institute of Public Relations from 1938 to 1941. During World War II, he served as publicity director for the Selective Service System in New York. In addition to short stories, Powel wrote several books throughout his career, including Walter Camp: The Father of American Football (1926), The Virgin Queene (1928), and The Invincible Jew (1930).

All net proceeds from the sale benefit non-profit Westport Book Sale Ventures, which raises funds for the Westport CT Public Library while providing employment and job training for adults with disabilities.

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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