The Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters: Volume V: 1960 & VI: 1961-62

In this last of three double volumes, we read British publisher Hart-Davis's weekly letters about his editorial responsibilities and about cultural life in London, while housebound retired Eton master Lyttelton sends risque quotations, discussions of cricket and reactions to the authors and books he is discovering and reading. The collection at hand extends between 1960 and 1962, the year Lyttelton died. Hart-Davis is 52 years old, Lyttelton 77, as this series commences. Here are hundreds of witty comments, gossip and stories about Carlyle, Samuel Johnson and Henry James, as well as about Max Beerbohm, Eliot, Shaw, Wells, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Cambridge's irascible critic F. R. Leavis. The book concludes with a tribute written by Hart-Davis to be read at a dinner in London celebrating what would have been Lyttelton's 100th birthday. (Apr.)