Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Autograph letter : [Abbotsford, Scotland] to "Alicia," [1966 Jan. 8].

BIB_ID
318143
Accession number
MA 2519.16A
Creator
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
Display Date
[1966 Jan. 8].
Credit line
Gift of John Steinbeck, 1966.
Description
1 item (3 p.) ; 32.3cm
Notes
Part of a collection of letters from John Steinbeck to Alicia Patterson Guggenheim, written from New York and during his travels in Ireland, England, Israel in 1965-1966. Alicia Patterson Guggenheim was the editor and publisher of Newsday from 1940 until her death in 1963 and Steinbeck addressed his letter "not....to someone who is dead, but rather to a living mind and a huge curiosity" (see MA 2519.39). Steinbeck wrote the letters in this series as a weekly column for Newsday. Letters in the collection have been cataloged individually; see collection-level record for more information.
Place and date of writing from the publication details of this letter in "John Steinbeck and Newsday" by Robert B. Harmon; see publication details below.
Written on white legal pad paper.
Provenance
Gift of John Steinbeck in 1966.
Summary
Describing his visit to the home of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford; describing the library and a book they found, printed in 1582, relating the Arthurian legend and quoting "word for word the unknown manuscript we had just the day before discovered at Alnwick;" adding that we "read in the old records that it has never been easy, but we exist, which seems to mean that it is not hopeless."