ARCHIVE OF 4 AUTOGRAPHED LETTERS SIGNED

Letter. Near Fine. A fine archive of 4 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED in Beston's neat hand consisting of 10 pages and 2 hand-addressed and SIGNED envelopes along with a small photograph of Beston and his wife, Elizabeth Coatsworth, annotated in another hand on the rear. Three of the letters are addressed to Wilmot Brewer and one to Brookes More, both of Hingham, Massachusetts, where Beston lived. Brewer edited a collection of poems by More and wrote a brief biography of him. In the letter to More, Beston thanks him for sending his translation of Ovid's METAMORPHOSES. In a letter to Brewer he thanks him for his book on More: "In days so confused and really terrible as these, it is sustaining to the spirit to read of one who has dedicated his life to beauty and the works of the muses." In another letter to Brewer dated 28 December 1941 Beston mentions World War II and thanks him for his "most readable study of the place and influence of the METAMORPHOSES." In the longest letter Beston comments on a book about Virgil: "The book does just what a book ought first of all to do, it enlarges life, throwing good wood on the fire of the imagination and stirring one's interest in the variety and richness of the human spirit."

Henry Beston was an American writer and naturalist, best known as the author of THE OUTERMOST HOUSE, 1928, considered a classic of both writing about nature and about Cape Cod. Spiritually shaken by his experiences in World War I, which included being aboard an American destroyer during combat engagement and sinking, Beston retreated to the outer beach at Eastham in search of peace and solitude, which resulted in the creation of his classic. Beston is considered one of the fathers of the modern environmental movement. Rachel Carson said that Beston was the only author who ever influenced her writing.