Enclosure – RG Letter of Response to Yvonne Cloud1

May 11 1938
c/o [care of] Messrs [Misters] Cassell
La Belle Sauvage
Ludgate Hill
E.S.2
Dear Madam,
If your association were one for intellectual integrity, all writers being debarred from membership whose party or literary affiliations disproved their ×××× [crossed out] claim to this, it[RG] would be another matter. But of the few writers of proved integrity in this country [RG] not one, so far as I can see, appears on your list; and of those who do appear on[RG] your list ×××× [crossed out] many have either[RG] most of the names on your list I cannot associate with conspicuous integrity: many of them having[RG] politically committed themselves to views which contravene the elementary rules of literary truthfulness, or having persistently avoided committing themselves at all[RG] on any serious subject whatsoever[RG]. So, to be frank, I cannot feel the least sympathy,
Yours sincerely
Robert Graves

Editorial Notes

1(Association of Writers for Intellectual Liberty); see log entry 11 May 1938 eds.

Hands Referenced

    • Annotation: ink correction
    • Character: regular
    • Ink: black

Organizations Mentioned

  • Cassell and Company Ltd.

    Publishers of Robert Graves' Collected Poems [1938], and the novel Count Belisarius [1938].

  • Editors

    Editors of the Graves Diary Project.