Look Homeward, Angel [antikvár]

THOMAS WOLFE' When in the spring of ig4j William B. Wisdom, of New Orleans, presented to the Harvard College Library his distinguished collection of Thomas Wolfe, it was at once apparent that the person above all others to provide an introduction to it was Maxwell E. Perkins, 'oy, of Charles Scribner's Sons, editor of Wolfe's first novels, and allied to Wolfe by the closest ties of profession and of friendship. Mr. Perkins gladly consented to prepare an article; he was engaged upon it at his sudden death on ly fune ig4y. Although the article was to have been expanded by another three thousand words, with a more detailed discussion of Wolfe as a person, as it stands it has the effect of a self-contained statement. It is published as the last writing of Maxwell Perkins and as an expression of the memorial which he planned to compose to Thomas Wolfe. I think that there is not in any one place so nearly complete a collection of an author's writings and records as that of Thomas Wolfe's now in the Harvard Library. Wheii he died on that sad day in September 1938, when war was impending, or soon after that, I learned that I was his executor and that he had actually left little—as he would have thought, and as it seemed then—besides his manuscripts. It was my obligation to dispose of them to the advantage of his beneficiaries and his memory, and though the times were bad, and Wolfe had not then been recognized as what he now is, I could have sold them commercially, piecemeal, through dealers, for more money than they ever brought. I was determined that this literary estate should remain a unit, available to ^ The article is printed in the form received from Mr. Perkins's secretary two days after his death, with some slight modifications in punctuation and with the addition of a title. [Note by the Editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin.1 vii