"Dylan Thomas' grocery bill is among a trove of famous writers' personal documents and letters many of which are as yet unseen by the public, and have been exclusively shown to the Guardian discovered in the case files of a literary charity. A unpublished note from Sylvia Plath's doctor and an unseen letter by Nobel prize winner Doris Lessing also feature in the cache of documents, which once formed applications to the Royal Literary Fund (RLF), a charity that awards hardship grants to writers."
"Letters from James Joyce, CS Lewis, Joseph Conrad, Mervyn Peake and Edith Nesbit are among those found in the case files, which are stored between the British Library, where they are available to view, and at the RLF offices tucked behind Fleet Street, where discoveries are ongoing as boxes of case files continue to be catalogued. Many documents show writers at the most vulnerable times of their lives, often in precarious positions early in their careers."
"Elsewhere, Joyce, in his 1915 application, writes that he receives nothing in the way of royalties, the sales of his books being below the required number. And Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, wrote in an August 1914 letter that the shock of her husband's death overcame me completely and now my brain will not do the poetry romance and fairy tales by which I have earned most of my livelihood."
A cache of Royal Literary Fund case files includes grocery bills, medical notes, application letters and personal documents from major writers such as Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing, James Joyce, CS Lewis, Joseph Conrad, Mervyn Peake and Edith Nesbit. Many documents were previously unseen by the public and sit between the British Library and RLF offices as cataloguing continues. The items document vulnerability: financial hardship, low book sales, illness, bereavement and difficult marriages. Examples include a 1951 grocery bill from Dylan Thomas, a doctor's note about Plath's appendectomy, Joyce's 1915 statement of receiving no royalties, and Nesbit's 1914 lament after her husband's death.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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