Loving Letters Ogden Nash

Letters written to Ogden Nash's future wife Frances reveal some of the sensitivity that graced his poetry

Smith, Nash's daughter, here unveils only a portion of the letters written by the humorist to his wife, children and relatives. It is nevertheless a collection of generous scope, revealing the family man behind the famous creator of beguiling light verse and lyricist of the smash hit One Touch of Venus . The funniest and most touching epistles went daily from New York to Frances Leonard, a woman Nash met in Baltimore in 1928; he carried on a courtship by mail until she consented to marry him in 1931. Despite hard times in their long years together, Nash (1907-1971) remained, above all, a lover, and Frances his best-beloved, as revealed in one of his annual Valentine notes: "More than a cat bird hates a cat, / Or a criminal hates a cue, / Or the Axis hates the United States, / That's how much I love you." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A dwindling readership familiar with and fond of the light verse of Ogden Nash will relish his daughter's ample selection of her father's breezy but persistent letters to his fiancee Frances Leonard, and later, to his daughters Isabel and Linell. Written between 1928 and 1971, Nash's letters (his wife's to him are not included) are sometimes gushy, yet offer a tantalizing glimpse of his work in publishing firms, on The New Yorker , in the precarious business of Broadway collaborator, and on the grueling lecture circuit. Smith's perhaps too -generous offering shows that Nash was, above all, a family man, only second a poet and humorous public speaker.
- Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.