The correspondence of Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher

Abstract

The correspondence of Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher from their first meeting in 1913 to Miss Lowell's death in 1925 contains valuable literary history and criticism. What is preserved here is the known existing correspondence between Miss Lowell and Fletcher. The letters herein are arranged in chronological order, based on dates affixed by the sender or on internal evidence. Persons, events, and publications are identified by extensive annotations. Biographical information in the introduction places the correspondence in the contexts of the poets' lives. The correspondence contains much of interest to the literary scholar. The letters trace the history of Imagism and touch on the careers of almost every notable American and British poet of the period--Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, H. D., F. S. Flint, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams among others. In addition to the two poets' candid opinions of the works and personalities of their literary confreres, the letters also contain detailed critiques of their own poems and insights concerning publishers, critics, poetry magazines, and literary groups. The effects of then current events on the lives and creativity of the poets are also recorded. In summary, the letters constitute a significant and unique reflection of the course of British and American poetry from 1913 to 1925, and furnish new insights into the Imagist movement and the lives and works of Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher.