Catherine Carswell's War: Letters 1939-1946

This selection begins in 1939, as war looms, with the writer Catherine Carswell (1879-1946) penning letters to friends and family, filled with a mix of domestic, financial, literary and political news and concerns, and to the BBC about broadcasting projects and proposals. The focus sharpens with the sudden death of her husband, Donald Carswell, on the first night of the London blackout in 1940, and her choice to live an independent life based in London amid her circle of fellow writers, poets, publishers, booksellers, journalists, family and friends. The frequent letters to her son, John Carswell, are a remarkable collection, as are those written to Persis Miller, with whom she had worked to help refugees following the Spanish Civil War. When Miller left London for New York in 1940, she put Catherine in charge of her possessions and her refugees, funding from America those who wished to go to Mexico. Other long-standing friends and correspondents in this period include Florence Marian McNeill, Ivy Litvinov and Bryna Davis. The last letter here is to John, written days before Catherine's death in February 1946 - the news is of looking forward to correcting book proofs, ideas for radio broadcasts, a visit from a neighbour and, ever practical, spring-cleaning. For the most part the originals of the letters are scattered across a number of libraries, often within the collections of other writers' letters. This collection, and the earlier Selected Letters of Catherine Carswell, makes them more easily available to those with an interest in the life - and times - of this remarkable Scottish novelist, biographer, journalist, and critic.