A.L.S. and T.L.S. letters from Laura Z. Hobson to Saxe Commins, and a letter to Dorothy Commins

1958. 5 typescript leaves [all manuscript signed], 1 manuscript letter, and two envelopes postmarked 1953 and 1958 respectively. A fine collection of letters and a wonderful literary association. 5 typescript leaves [all manuscript signed], 1 manuscript letter, and two envelopes postmarked 1953 and 1958 respectively. A collection of letters from Laura Z. Hobson to editor Saxe Commins. Saxe Commins (b.1892 - d.1958) was an editor at Random House from 1933 to 1957. He was an editor for many of the greats, such as Eugene O'Neill, Theodore Drieser, Sinclair Lewis, W.H. Auden, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and William Faulkner (who would stay at their house), and Budd Schulberg among others.

Laura Z. Hobson (b.1900 - d.1986) was an author well known for her 1947 book Gentlemen's Agreement. In a couple of letters from August of 1953 she discusses work owed to Commins, as well as his illness, which he would eventually die from years later. This was a time when Hobson was writing her fifth novel, which was to be a fictionalized account of her radical childhood (Hobson's family were socialists), she suffered from writer's block. In 1953, she began writing a daily newspaper column for the International News Service, entitled "Assignment America," the columns she refers to in these letters. In It wasn't until 1959 that she returned to her abandoned novel, which was finally published by Random House in 1964 as First Papers, considered by many to be her finest novel.

In a letter dated July 19th, 1958 Hobson sends her condolences to Saxe's widow Dorothy Berliner Commins, and regrets a missed opportunity to complete her novel with him.