SYMONS, Alphonse James Albert (1900-1941) - photo 1

SYMONS, Alphonse James Albert (1900-1941)

Lot 139
13.02.2025 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1362831
Lot 139 | SYMONS, Alphonse James Albert (1900-1941)
Estimate value
£ 4 000 – 6 000
SYMONS, Alphonse James Albert (1900-1941)
Approximately 31 autograph letters and 14 typed letters signed ('Alphonse', 'A.J.', 'A.J.A. Symons') to Harold Fisher, [31 January 1921] - 22 May 1941
In evolving iterations of Symons' calligraphic script, with Fisher's copies of some of his replies; also an autograph letter of introduction for Fisher to Holbrook Jackson, 28 June 1925, transcripts of two poems by Ernest Dowson, Fisher's manuscript notes on John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, and George Moore's 'Avowals', and related items. Half green morocco case, red labels. Provenance: Barry Humphries (1934-2023).

On the authors of the 1890s and other literary interests. The early letters show Symons' preoccupation with the authors of the 1890s, of which he was a noted bibliographer and anthologist: a long letter of 11 September 1925 defends Ernest Dowson's verse against a charge of 'commonplaceness of subject'; a few weeks later he discusses Walter Pater as 'one of the philosophers of the Nineties ... A spiritual impulse ... which in exhausting itself threw off Pater, Wilde, Beerbohm, George Moore, Dowson, Arthur Symons ... and the rest of my 50 victims – is such an impulse to be dismissed as ineffective, or decadent, or unreal, or pose, or nonsense ...?'. In the following year he asks Fisher's help on 'the problem that [J.A.] Symonds offers'. Elsewhere, he discusses literary and publishing projects (including his biography of Baron Corvo, published in 1934), amongst other news. The later letters reflect the difficulties of Symons last years – in September 1938 he worries that his divorce two years previously had affected Fisher's friendship with him, and from 1940 the letters refer to his nervous breakdown and the growing symptoms of what was to prove a fatal brain tumour.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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13.02.2025 – 13.02.2025
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