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One-page TLS (16th February, 1954) on white paper: nine lines in black type, featuring Stopes' Norbury Park, Dorking letter head and signed in blue pen. Toned, folded, with brief pen and pencil notes by Margaret Crosland and, presumably, Neville Armstrong (or an associate at Neville Armstrong Esq.), small stain, a little creased. Very good A wonderfully tart one-page TLS from Marie Stopes to the British publisher Neville Armstrong (1913-2008), expressing, in no uncertain terms and following advice, that she will "not go any further with the matter with you": it seems Margaret Crosland had suggested a biography of the pioneering English birth control advocate, paleobotanist and eugenicist, but, as Crosland notes, "she was writing her own story" and, indeed, feared that, "Miss Crosland's book would embarrass me". Stopes would die four years later, without publishing a memoir; Crosland doesn't appear to have returned to the subject. From Margaret Crosland's archive. Crosland (1920-2017) was an important and prolific British literary biographer and translator of French and Italian authors, "who pioneered Cocteau" in Britain (Owen, 2009). She was the French literature consultant for the British publisher Peter Owen, who issued many of her biographies and translations, and thus she played a crucial role in introducing French authors, such as Jean Cocteau and Colette, as well as the Marquis de Sade, Apollinaire and Anaïs Nin, to mid-century British audiences. Owen observed that Crosland was "very important in advising us on books to publish. It was Margaret who pioneered Cocteau [. and] led us to Dalí, as she knew his novel Hidden Faces" (ibid). Her biographical subjects included both Colette and Jean Cocteau (titles much under discussion in her archive), Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Radiguet and Edith Piaf, and she translated works by writers including Sade (for Neville Spearman and Peter Owen), Emile Zola, Edmond de Goncourt and Cesare Pavese, as well as Colette and Cocteau. She was also a voluminous correspondent, literary broker and networker, as her letters evidence in rich and fascinating detail. Margaret Crosland's traunch of correspondence with Peter Owen and associates (1955-1969) is held by Special Collections at the University of Tulsa. Peter Owen (2009) Interview with Steven Fowler, Vice Magazine.
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