Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1944-1978 (Creation)
Level of description
File
Extent and medium
2 cm.
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Anna Kavan (1901-1968) was a writer of short stories, essays and novels and a literary critic; she was also a painter and an interior designer.
She was born Helen Emily Woods in Cannes on 10 April 1901 of English parents and spent her childhood in Europe, California and England, and took the name of Anna Kavan, her own fictional alter ego about 1940. She began writing while living with her first husband Donald Ferguson in Burma. Her literary works have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish and Japanese. Rhys Davies 'who knew her longer and possibly better than anyone', according to her biographer D. A. Callard, was asked to write her biography by her literary agent David Higham. He refused saying that even after thirty years of friendship he did not know enough. Rhys Davies wrote introductions to her books which were published posthumously and his last published novel, Honeysuckle girl (London, 1975) examines the breakdown of her marriage with Stuart Edmonson. Raymond Marriott and Rhys Davies became her literary executors and equally inherited her estate after her death in December 1968.
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The file includes letters, 1944-1978, from Anna Kavan (35), Robert Macbryde (2), Raymond Marriott (8), Roland Mathias (4), Bill Naughton (6), and Count Potocki of Montalk (5), together with a booklet No English horse, published in 1967, containing translations of poems from the Magyar by him and a check list of publications by or concerning him published in 1974. There are also letters from Louis F. Quinain (4), Keidrych Rhys (7) and Richard Rhys (3), together with transcripts of letters from D. H. Lawrence to Rhys Davies, 1929, and of letters from Frieda Lawrence to him, 1928-1929.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
The original letters from D. H. Lawrence and Frieda Lawrence are in The Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Note
Preferred citation: R2/6
Alternative identifier(s)
Virtua system control number
GEAC system control number
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
- Kavan, Anna, 1901-1968 -- Correspondence. (Subject)
- Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930 (Subject)
- Marriott, Raymond, -- Correspondence (Subject)
- Rhys, Keidrych -- Correspondence (Subject)
- Marriott, Raymond, (Subject)
- Mathias, Roland (Subject)
- Naughton, Bill, 1910-1992 (Subject)
- Potocki de Montalk, Geoffrey, Count 1903- (Subject)
- Quinain, Louis (Subject)
- Rhys, Keidrych (Subject)
- Dynevor, Richard Charles Uryan Rhys, Baron, 1935-2008 (Subject)