KATHLEEN AND CHRISTOPHER by Lisa Colletta ( 9780816645800 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

KATHLEEN AND CHRISTOPHER
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD'S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£20.99
We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for further information.

ISBN 10:

0816645809

ISBN 13:

9780816645800

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

Pub. date:

1 November, 2005

Edition:

Annotated edition

Pages:

160

Description:

Opening a window into the fascinating and, in many ways, mysterious period in Christopher Isherwood's life, this book collects more than one hundred letters the young author wrote to his mother between 1935 and 1940. Written in extraordinary times, these letters reveal a complex yet wholly recognizable and very close bond between mother and son.

Synopsis:

Isherwood's previously unpublished letters to his mother cast his early years as a writer in a new light. "My darling Mummy, Many thanks for your letter and the cutting. Could you send a photograph of me to the American publishers William Morrow & Company? Better send the very ugly full face one where I haven't shaved...You'll find it in my photo drawer, in the smoking room bureau." Opening a window into the most fascinating and, in many ways, most mysterious period in Christopher Isherwood's life, "Kathleen and Christopher" collects more than one hundred previously unpublished letters the young author wrote to his mother between 1935 and 1940. Composed while he was still a struggling writer, they offer a brilliant eyewitness account of Europe on the brink of war and an intimate look at the early career of a major literary figure. Isherwood destroyed his diaries from these years, these letters - published for the first time and edited and introduced by Lisa Colletta - provide one of the few records of this part of his life not filtered through the lens of time and memory. They contain requests for money and books, descriptions of his travels, stories of his friends W. H.Auden and Stephen Spender, reactions to the critical reception of his "Berlin Stories", and a tense account of his failed attempt to save his lover Heinz from conscription into the Nazi military. The final letters in this volume document Isherwood's journey to Los Angeles, where he permanently settled. Also included are thirty images from Isherwood's personal photo album and reproductions of postcards from his international travels. Warm, confiding, and sometimes quite caustic, the letters also reveal a closer affection between the young Isherwood and his mother than his biographers have portrayed. While Isherwood acknowledged that it took him a long time to come to terms with his mother's influence on his life, the letters in "Kathleen and Christopher" dispute the prevalent idea that theirs was a relationship rife with conflict. Isherwood's everyday correspondence, written in extraordinary times, reveals a complex yet wholly recognizable and very close bond between mother and son. She was for him, in turns, an agent, a sounding board, and an unbreakable connection to England.

Illustrations:

44 halftones

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Minnesota Press

Returns:

Non-returnable

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