While the letters reveal an intimate portrait of the literary and personal friendship of Maxwell Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, they also constitute a remarkable history of the Scribner publishing house from 1930 to 1947, when Perkins died. Rawlings, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for The Yearling, was one of Scribner's stars in an era when publishing was difficult for women writers. Perkins was her champion, offering editorial opinion, a week-by-week critique of her work, and candid gossip about other writers he nurtured, most notably Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe.
Perkins and Rawlings brought magic to their correspondence. Though four years passed before they used each other’s first name, their attraction was mutual: they shared a sense of humor, concerns about health, discreet details about their marriages, a weakness for the bottle, and, at times, agonizing fits of despair. She sent him oranges from her citrus grove in north central Florida; he mailed her a steady supply of the stimulating nonfiction she loved to read while writing novels.
Rawlings wrote not just to Perkins but for him. He responded--to both her life and her work--with wisdom, clarity, and generosity. The correspondence of these two superb letter writers presents an eloquent artifact of a rare literary partnership.
