The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore

About this book

In her introduction Bonnie Costello writes: On July 9 1959 T. S. Eliot wrote to Marianne Moore: "One of the books which obviously must in the fullness of time be published . . . will be the Letters of Marianne Moore." We are pleased to fulfill his prediction. Marianne Moores correspondence makes up the largest and most broadly significant collection of any modern poet. It documents the first two-thirds of this century reflecting shifts from Victorian to modernist culture the experience of the two world wars the Depression and postwar prosperity and the changing face of the arts in America and Europe. Moore wrote letters daily for most of her life--long intense letters to friends and family; shorter but always distinctive letters to an ever-widening circle of acquaintances and fans. At the height of her celebrity she would occasionally write as many as fifty letters a day. Both Moore and her correspondents appreciated the value of their exchange so that an extraordinary number of letters approximately thirty thousand have been preserved . . . It is Moores poetry that draws us to her letters of course. But in making this selection we have tried to present the life and mind of a woman whose interests extended to all the arts to religion politics and psychology to fashion sports and the domestic arts moving freely between high culture and popular culture and whose family and friendships remained as important as her professional life. Moores correspondence is unique in the extent of its extraliterary interests and passionate engagement with the world at large. From her college adventures her travels and the flurry of her artistic and social activities there seems to have been no lull. What has struck us most in reading through Moores letters is the vitality and fullness of the long life they record.