FOUR AUTOGRAPHED LETTERS SIGNED.

London and Paris: By Hand, 1970. 4 individual letters, three in quarto and one in octavo , the four letters total eight pages of written correspondence and include the envelopes for each of the letters. All of the letters are in fine condition and very well preserved. A FINE COLLECTION OF FOUR AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY THE POET, NOVELIST AND ESSAYIST STEPHEN SPENDER. Written to Thomas Dotton, Mr. Spender's correspondence has to do with the renting of Mr. Dotton's home in Switzerland and with occasional literary matters including Spender's reading of Rilke as well as other activities during the time period.
Spender was discovered by T.S. Eliot, an editor at Faber & Faber, in 1933. His early poetry, notably Poems (1933), was often inspired by social protest. Living in Vienna, he further expressed his convictions in Forward from Liberalism.
At the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, which had published the first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, historic figures made rare appearances to read their work: Paul Valéry, André Gide and Eliot. Hemingway even broke his rule of not reading in public if Spender would read with him. Since Spender agreed, Hemingway appeared for a rare reading in public with him.
But his closest friend and the man who had the biggest influence on him was W. H. Auden, who introduced him to Christopher Isherwood. The earliest version of Poems written by Auden was handprinted by Spender. He left Oxford without taking a degree and in 1929 moved to Hamburg. Isherwood invited him to come to Berlin but every six months, went back to England to maintain the protocols established by the national authorities.
Spender was acquainted with fellow Auden Group members Louis MacNeice, Edward Upward and Cecil Day-Lewis. He was friendly with David Jones and later came to know W. B. Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, Isaiah Berlin, Mary McCarthy, Roy Campbell, Raymond Chandler, Dylan Thomas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colin Wilson, Aleister Crowley, F.T. Prince and T. S. Eliot, as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group, particularly Virginia Woolf.
At a ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion on 6 June 1984, US President Ronald Reagan quoted from Spender's poem "The Truly Great" in his remarks: Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life... and left the vivid air signed with your honor".