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This article is taken from PN Review 22, Volume 8 Number 2, November - December 1981.

Letters to H. S. Ede David Jones

The following selection from David Jones's letters to H. S. Ede will be seen in a more complete context if the reader will first turn to my essay on page 17 of this issue in which I review René Hague's Dai Greatcoat, a volume of Jones's letters to four correspondents of whom H. S. Ede is one. The review of that book is intended in part to function as an introduction to the letters and excerpts printed below. Hague prints only thirteen out of the one hundred letters from the Ede correspondence in Dai Greatcoat, and some of these thirteen are not printed entire. I do not reprint here, of course, any of the material appearing in Dai Greatcoat. None of these letters or excerpts (save for the three paragraphs from the formal 'Life' written up for Ede to consult in writing his Horizon article on David Jones) have been printed before. Though David Jones's handwriting is usually fairly clear, I am sometimes unable to make out certain words, especially when he writes in pencil or green ink. Where I am in doubt about a particular word or group of words I have used brackets, and where I cannot make something out at all I have bracketed two bars of space [ ]. This typographical convention must also serve when it comes to editorial additions, such as surnames. Ellipses indicate where cuts are made in the text. Some of the letters, in fact, are quite long. Thanks are due ...


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