AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS)

Indianapolis, 8 April 1881. Letter. Ink smudged in several places, some soiling. Very Good with dark ink. A four-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) in full on 10-1/4" x 6-1/4" personal stationery folded into four panels to book reviewer William McCormick regarding his review of Tarkington's novel THE TURMOIL and reviewing in general. In part: "I feel peculiarly grateful to you; my feeling about reviews is that a reviewer reviews himself as well as the book he is estimating. Most reviews seem to me to reveal more of the reviewer than of the book. How many, many for instance, shout of egotism; the reviewer being in labor from the outset to demonstrate that he is the knowing fellow, the author a faltering apprentice, or worse! Your review made me grateful because it was kind enough to see at what pains I had been to write 'decent prose.' Such matters are usually overlooked because--I cannot help but believe it--because the great majority of reviewers have no perspective of prose texture. They do not understand it--they cannot even feel it... All my life I have worked for prose--for the texture of it--as the primary thing to be obtained--and seldom indeed has a reviewer told me that here and there I have obtained it... I shall put your review in the one copy of the book which I keep and I do thank you!" Also with a one-page 1930 AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) from McCormick to the purchaser of this letter from him giving him the provenance of the letter, along with a typed transcript of Tarkington's letter.