Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten (2 volume set in a slipcase)

Britten, Benjamin (Mitchell and Reed, eds.)

ISBN 10: 0520065204 / ISBN 13: 9780520065208

Published by U. of California, Berkeley, 1991

About this Item

8vo. 1403p in 2 vol. About 15 pp have been dog-eared by the previous owner, Pultizer winner. NYT music critic Donal Henahan-->> see more. Accompanying are a NYT book review slip to Mr Henahan, asking for a. thousand words by May 1. A printed copy of the review on 'old style'. pin-feed computer paper, about 90 lines long. Four pages of handwritten. notes, on 3 sheets of yellow paper, presumably written by Henahan. Can't. put mylar on these jackets, as the books barely fit into the slipcase at. this point. Near Fine/Near Fine in a lightly worn slipcase.

Seller Inventory # MAIN034754I

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten (2 volume set in a slipcase)
• Publisher: U. of California, Berkeley
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520065204
• ISBN 13: 9780520065208
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

These remarkable letters, never before published, constitute a comprehensive biography told largely in Britten's own words. Volume 1 accompanies him through prep and English public school and then to London to the Royal College of Music, where the young composer is plunged into metropolitan life and makes influential new friends, among them Auden and Isherwood. This was a time of prodigious musical creativity, a growing awareness of his homosexuality, and the dawning of his political convictions. It was during this time that Britten met Peter Pears, the partner with whom his musical and personal relationship was to last a lifetime. This volume closes in May, 1939, when Britten and Pears depart for the United States.

Volume 2 offers an overview of a crucial period in American and British history, politics, and culture. Britten's experience of exile, his return with Pears to England to face recriminations as a Conscientious Objector and prejudice as a brilliant gay artist, and the triumph of his first major opera, Peter Grimes, are all outlined in letters which are a fascinating mix of the public and private.

These first two volumes of the Selected Letters and Diaries—a further two are in preparation—make a fundamental contribution to Britten studies and to twentieth-century cultural history.

About the Author

Donald Mitchell is the author of innumerable books and articles on Britten and an eminent Mahler scholar as well. Philip Reed is Staff Musicologist at the Britten-Pears Library.